Much Too Soon
by Le KING
Summary: AU. Castiel kidnaps Dean and tries really hard to convince him that their living together is somehow going to stop the apocalypse.
1. The Trolley Problem

_A/N: Hi, my name is King, welcome to the Red Tree verse, or, like, the MTS verse I guess, because feels, and I don't own Supernatural._

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**MUCH TOO SOON**

Castiel knows beginnings are difficult. Beginnings, and endings, too, he supposes, are so inherently human that Man has always been better equipped to cope with the uncertainty of death.

It takes Castiel a moment to recognize the fallacy of such thinking.

No, he understands now, humans are as well equipped to deal with their certain and timely demise as any being, regardless of its placement in the world.

Such are beginnings.

Sudden.

New.

More often than not, something has begun before it even has a name. And even without a name, it is new and wonderful.

Castiel thinks of Dean. The endings, too, are never quite final, not even in death. Human souls leave their earthly dwellings to go on into the afterlife. There are ways of knowing where they will go, of course, but even this knowledge has its limitations.

Castiel does not know where he will go once his long existence finally comes to an end. He ponders for the first time why there are no angel souls in hell, or purgatory, or heaven. Perhaps because angels have no souls.

He is not content with this discovery.

He never thought about dying until his death seemed so imminent, and only that was just minutes ago. He is not ready to leave this world, he recognizes. He would have had no such query if his death was an order or a result of the ruling by The Host. He would have never questioned it then, but now that it is his choice, he welcomes what it would save Dean, but not what it would kill himself.

He thinks of Dean's soul.

Dean's soul is rich and beautiful, and it is exactly the same like all the others, except not to Castiel. Dean's soul is precious to Castiel, and it's strange to place a value into something just because Castiel likes it. But he likes it. He loves it. But he loves Dean more than he loves Dean's soul, and he wants Dean to live.

A soul, it all it's glamour, is only an impression of a beautiful life gone by. A soul isn't a person. A soul is a photograph. .

That was the truth behind all that lived in heaven and hell.

It was harsh, but it was what it was. Afterlife wasn't life. Life was life. This was why Castiel wanted Dean to live.

And it is with his will that he exchanged Dean's death for his own.

Castiel wills it, but he still does not understand free will.

It is for Dean that he chooses to die tonight. Not for himself and not the The Host. For Dean.

Castiel remembers being born.

He remembers being born with nothing but a name and a purpose.

The specifics of the purpose were never clear, and he learned over his stay with Dean that nothing is ever really clear for any of God's creations. But he was born to serve heaven, and he knows this with certainty. There is no service in what he is about to do, and he was never one to bend the rules, but he understands the fine line between bending a stick and cracking it in half. Breaking the rules is not clean, he notices. There are splinters everywhere. Shreds and splinters of a stupid angel's broken heart, he supposes.

Today, Dean Winchester must die.

Castiel wonders how many Castiels just like him stood at this very spot a time ago today and decided to end their existence to save a Dean. Their Dean.

On this day Castiel must end.

He will never hear another prayer that goes through him on Thursday, never sit on the very edge of the furthest pillar which holds the Kingdom of Heaven above the planes of Earth, never again will he marvel in the beauty of Creation.

But, he looks on and smiles, _I am not smiling_, and_ you smile with your eyes, Cas,_ because he sees Dean Winchester, and Dean Winchester looks past him and waves his brother away.

This Dean does not know Castiel. Not yet.

This Dean is interrogating a barmaid who lusts for him. He lies to her about his profession, and when she says she likes his suit, he lies and says the temperature of the bar is too high and perhaps he should take it off. He agrees to go with her after she is done working because her accommodations have central air conditioning.

Castiel is not bothered by this.

Samuel, _buddy, just call him Sam, he really doesn't need to grow any bigger, jus' look at him, _has left the bar and is interrogating the dog outside. They are, after all, on a hunt for vampires. Perhaps the barmaid or the dog has seen something suspicious.

"And sweetheart, get one for my friend here."

"No, thank you."

"Dude. Nothing weird," Dean slides a glass down the bar at Castiel, "on me. I'm celebrating," he winks at the bar girl and she winks at him. "You look like you need to get lucky. No offence, man, but you look like crap. Those girls in the back are on a sorority initiation," Dean claps him on the back, "you're welcome."

Castiel looks into Dean's soul for a brief moment and sees black rot suffocating his beautiful essence. It's unsettling, dark, and yet no soul is ever ugly, especially not Dean's, not now, and not a year from now, and not ever.

"Ah. That is not what troubles me. But thank you, I appreciate the sentiment," Castiel licks at his beer. It tastes as any bitter inequity would. The only times he likes beer is when he can taste it on Dean's lips. But this isn't their time. Not yet.

"Shame," Dean says and chugs his own drink. "You not from this town?"

"No," Castiel says.

"Looking for someone?"

"Yes. I am looking for my friend."

"Your friend lost or somethin'?"

"No," Castiel says honestly. "But I was lost."

He longs to say goodbye. He is a creature of a habit, not of sentiment, and saying well-wishes and goodbyes was never a custom when sending or being sent into a battle.

It is a custom to profess love onto his brothers and sisters. But Dean is, in a sense, his family, more than that, so much more. Castiel wonders if Dean knows this. He must. Castiel blames himself for never telling him. Dean has never grasped at the finer meanings of life, never quite understood Castiel, only loved him, and hoped the feeling was mutual. Castiel feels Dean's hope even now, a long time from now, but what is time if not a distance? He feels loss at never having told. He could remedy it now. He could simply lick at his beer and tell Dean he loves him, and Dean would understand what he had meant when the time is right.

But he doesn't say anything.

He cannot. Dean does not know him yet.

This is the hardest part. He thought it would be easier. This life, Dean's life, the brief time they spent together exchanging kisses between sheets was nothing but a moment lived and gone in Castiel's long existence. Castiel thought the plague and the wars were blinks in time, breaths exhaled, moments passed. This, this was so much shorter. And yet it was everything.

And he must let it go.

"Thank you for the beer," Castiel says solemnly. He had prayed for God to guide him in every uncertainty, and as blasphemous as it is for an angel to think such thoughts, he does not need God now. He is at his own devises, and he has come to terms with this.

He touches Dean's shoulder. Dean is warm and beautiful. The touch lingers. Not because he knows his grace is almost drained into Dean and by the time he lets him go there would be enough of Castiel left for only one more trip in time, but because he loves Dean and does not want the moment to end.

But Dean had taught him human things about cars and pornography and personal space, and Castiel honors that. He lets go, and stumbles immediately.

Castiel is almost nothing now.

Dean is ignorant of what has occurred.

He walks out without another word.

It is better this way.

The door to the bar opens, and at once Castiel is in Paradise, in the beginning of all things, and at the end of his.

**1: White Horse**

**Ch 1: The T****rolley Problem**

Dean heard stories.

Everyone heard stories, but Dean heard about the aftermath, so he liked to think he had more credibility.

They stories he and Sammy heard on their way down the interstate through radio and a sorry bleeding someone in the back seat weren't horror stories or anything. Well, they were sort of horror stories, though Dean had a long list of first-hand experiences with horror and so his judgment may have been a bit biased. They were, at the very least, nasty stories. Stories about nasty things guardian angels did to their wards.

That was the thing, though. That wasn't the point, the point wasn't to grab as many humans as would fit in a basket and torture them, no, those were demons. Angels were a bit different in their purpose but not really their methods. Angels were down here to save souls.

Dean would put "apparently" right next to that big heap of bullshit.

The mentality behind it was that Dean (and his seven billion distant cousins) were given free will, and as long as they didn't go around putting kittens in trees, they could keep their free will, and eat it, too.

Touch, but don't taste. Taste, but don't swallow. That kind of thing.

Dean wouldn't swallow even at gunpoint.

Thing was, it was a half-assed attempt, so good try, angels. A for effort, but D for dedication. Dean knew a couple of spunky girls who'd even let him put the two together.

People still went to hell, thank the Lord and the Angels for trying, though. Dean always assumed he'd be one of the people to go get flushed down the pit. He figured this out sometime between carrying his baby brother out of a blazing wreckage of their very short-lived childhood and ganking a demon bitch right between her host's bright blue eyes, very alive and very aware of it all. Dean kind of assumed that when his short and fucked up life was finally over and done with, he'd go to hell. Hell on Earth was what he knew, and you don't just get away from that.

So he owned it. He ganked more bitches, slept with more lovely ladies of the Interstate, kept his moose of a baby brother out of trouble, stole credit cards and lulled himself into oblivion with Hunter's Helper.

Such was life. It was his, and he was proud of it.

So when one fine morning Dean peeled his eyes open after a strange dream about chilling out on a red tree with a guy in a brown coat, he woke up under a motel blanket and a curvy bar girl who'd supplied him endless free shots and her apartment number the night before. There was a pleasant tingling in his body, but it wasn't from having a good lay, no; it tingled and burned until it receded and pooled into the long stretch of skin down Dean's left wrist, just above the vain where he couldn't carve it away.

He watched the harsh, raw redness of the eroding skin on his wrist take shape, and the curse took hold of his mind.

At first, he thought _witch_. Then, it was bitch, then it was son-of-a-bitch, and then it was a mind-numbing sense of having lost everything.

His curse was a fucking Trinity. He was cursed by Heaven itself.

Dean pretended to take a piss, grabbed all his shit and bolted out of town before the blonde – Morgan or Megan or something - saw the curse and prayed for him.

Marked by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Dean contemplated leaving Sammy a note and taking his baby to do a James and Catherine. He was expecting to cross the Hell Bridge when he got there. He wasn't expecting to get marked for salvation.

So as Dean was concerned, his Lady Luck was sitting in a cloud somewhere and feeding laxatives to seagulls right above his head.

"What's wrong with you," Sam said during their bloated and silent Drive of Shame.

"Nothin'," Dean glared pointedly and hit a pothole. "Fuck."

"…okay."

"Okay _what_," he glared again, and lo and behold, there was another pothole.

Sam sniggered. "Did she give you bad news in the morning?"

"What? No."

"Dude. You'd tell me if it's herpes or something, right? We share clothes."

"No. It's- wait, what?"

Sam chewed his tongue.

"We do _what_? Are you stealing my shit again?"

"No. I meant like shirts and stuff."

"Sam. Did you put your dirty shirt-stretcher into my good shirts." Dean hissed in a not-question.

"No."

If Dean had to guess, Sam probably beamed trustworthiness at him with his large, girlish eyes. But that was only a guess. He didn't know what Sam was doing, because if anything of value was to be learned that night, it was that Dean Winchester should keep his (normal-sized, manly) eyes on the road.

Sam was as full of shit as Dean was. He was lucky though, because cuts and bruises were something that just happened, and Sam paid no mind to the bandage Dean conspicuously wrapped around his cursed wrist.

There was no need for Sam to know Dean could be picked up at any moment and airlifted off into the sunset. There was no need for Sammy to know because Dean was going to deal with it.

"That's a bit narrow for a grave," Sam was saying when they made it to a job where a nasty trickster was going ape-shit 'round town and eating poor bastards, apparently with bones and everything because no bodies were ever found, and then used the poor bastards' credit cards to pay off its massive gambling debt.

How could a trickster even be bad at freakin' gambling? Dean could hassle pool like a motherfucker, and he was perfectly human.

"I kinda feel bad for this one. Tricksters shouldn't even have to eat humans," Sam was saying, but Dean knew better than to preach Sam on his sympathy for the devil thing. There was enough devils and not nearly enough sympathy to go around, it was just that Sam needed a correct target he could bathe with sympathy and feelings and decorative doilies.

"The grave's for my hopes and dreams," said Dean and waited for Sam to get distracted by something pink and shiny so he could toss an angel blade into the dirt and bury it under a pile of leaves.

This was his plan. Dig the blade out later and kill whatever motherfucker came after him.

What, nobody said it was a good one.

"A bit shallow, too."

"Your _face_ is shallow."

Sam tossed him an axe, and it nearly caught him on the shoulder of his flannel.

He gestured his thanks to Sam.

Sam appreciated the gesture by throwing more stuff at him, this time aiming for injury.

"You had had it coming," Dean said and dodged a flask of holy water that should be empty, really, except it sloshed as it flew by Dean and Dean remembered throwing it into the backseat where Sam was complaining about needing to piss and then tuning out his pleas for a pit stop with some soulful Michel Jackson.

Oh no.

Sam _wouldn't._

Dean didn't say anything, but decided they had enough flasks to afford to leave that one under a pile of dead leaves and dirt.

Forty minutes later, a nosy ten-year old neighbor of trickster's parents' uncle's Bob (or something, Dean couldn't be bothered to remember) was leering at Dean's car.

"Do FBI agents usually have axes in their back seats?" the girl was asking, and Dean was about to tell her the axe was evidence in their current axe murderer investigation, but her conservatively-dressed mother rushed out in house slippers and interrupted Dean's lesson in trusting strangers.

"Claire, get back inside, it's late."

"These people are police, mom. Maybe we could ask them to look for da-"

"No, honey," the woman's voice softened. "Just get inside."

Oh, but nothing screamed an information goldmine like a spooked housewife whose house smelled like freshly-baked apple pie. A real fucking pie.

Sam realized what Dean was thinking, silently agreed with him (about the information thing, not about the pie thing), cleared his throat and adjusted his tie.

"Is anything troubling you, m'am?"

"No, sorry about that. Carry on, officers," she turned to leave.

Oh, but Dean couldn't just let a pie walk away.

"M'am, we're investigating the disappearance of-"

The woman stopped dead in her tracks, but said nothing.

"-your neighbor. Have you seen or heard anything strange?"

The woman relaxed, but still didn't say anything.

"If you're uncomfortable having this conversation out here, we can always step inside—" Dean began, hopeful.

"No. No… It would only give Claire ideas."

"What ideas, m'am?"

"Her father, my husband… you know what, it's not a police matter."

Sam pursed his lips like he understood what she meant, and Dean caught on soon after that.

"You are sure your husband is not, ah," he tried putting it delicately, "missing?"

"No," she said.

"Alright. What about your neighbor?"

"What about him?"

"Anything… excessive?"

"Excessive? That house," she waved at the probably-dead-guy's house in disdain, "is a frat house. There are ten of them in there, let God be the judge of what is excessive for that lot. I have to get my daughter inside, excuse me."

"Um," Dean tried.

Sam picked up the conversation smoothly.

"What about drugs, alcohol? Any… unusual behavior?"

The woman shook her head and was already walking back to her front door.

"This is Pontiac, gentleman. Illinois is not a great place to go to look for unusual behavior. They just go to the old bomb shelter. Probably to do drugs. Claire, I said, get back to the house."

"Did you tell them to look for daddy?" the girl squeaked, but her mother stuffed her through the door and shut it.

"Ouch," said Sam.

Dean had the brilliant idea to go a-snoopng around the old bomb shelter a minute later, and that was when lady luck really started loading machine guns with bird shit and firing it against Dean's proverbial windshield.

The bomb shelter, of all things it could have been housing, hosted demons. Like thirty of them. Except they were all asleep, and of course Sam realized there were thirty fucking demons in there only when all thirty smelled their breakfast.

And so Dean forgot about his curse. In his defense, he was busy killing shit, but he forgot the trinity on his hand and all that it implied, and he forgot only for a moment, but that's was all it took.

"Behind you!"

Sam was actually ahead of him, but there was no time for shoulder checks. Dean sprinted for his brother, mock-tossed him the knife, and some bitch actually jumped ahead to try and catch something that wasn't flying.

Dean dropped the knife and kicked it, Sam, dropped to the ground, caught the knife, and gutted the bitch mid-air.

Dean could taste the rain outside, it tasted like wet dirt under the wheels of impala, it tasted like tree bark after summer rain in Kansas, it tasted like his little brother's mashed peas and carrots, and there it was, he was out, on the free side of the rusty door he could just bolt shut-

"Sammy, hurry the fuck up!"

There was no "yeah" or "behind you."

There was not even a shout of pain or a call for help, and Dean would've heard it if there was one, through the haze of red mist and the blood throbbing in his ears and the blood that probably actually clogged his ears, he would've heard a shout, if there was a shout, but there was no shout.

"Sam!" and Dean was slicing his way back into the rotting hallway of hell, stabbing evil things upright and on the ground, discriminating against nothing and shouting, calling for Sam—

'_Oh God,"_ Dean _thought_, and it was a _prayer_, and he _prayed_ because he _forgot _that he no right to pray for anything. _"Please don't let him be dead."_

And they heard him.

They heard him and they descended softly, so softly that they made no sound.

The only sound was a wet sound that came from his forearm. Torn up by somebody's pet hellhound, the wound itself didn't register until someone's dick fingers dug into it.

Dean, in his mad pursuit of something he couldn't find, grunted, spun, stabbed the bastard on impulse, and propelled himself forward.

Except the grip on his arm made him nearly dislocate his shoulder.

…what.

He spun to stab again, in the face this time, except his blade was caught.

By the blade.

And he didn't need to see Heaven in its blue eyes to realize what the fuck the trench-coat thing holding him was.

"No!" he tore, "My brother is—"

And then everything was a blur, then it was blue, then white, then that bright green from that one rave party Dean never lived down, and when he finally broke free and ran for his brother, he was in a lavishly-decorated room with silver candlesticks, fruit in fruit bowls, paintings and carpet, and Dean was dripping blood on the carpet and Sam, Sam—

"PUT ME BACK," Dean shouted at nothing in particular because the fucking angel that snatched him had gone where it came from, and really, Dean should work on that too, Sam was out there, somewhere, he needed help and Dean was stupid, oh so stupid—

The white paneling of the room had to have a hidden door somewhere, and Dean spent the first hour of his imprisonment in the Green Room clawing at the walls and tearing out his fingernails until every panel had blood and bits of skin and nail and flesh all over it.

Dean spent the following twenty three hours discovering new combinations of cursing and begging, if only to be let out, if only to save his brother, if only to get a confirmation his brother was fine, but none came.

He didn't eat anything at first, not for the first couple of days, he only cursed excessively and continued breaking expensive furniture against walls.

The fruit never went stale, and when he ate a fucking pear on the fourth day, another just like it appeared in its place. There were also hamburgers he was sure weren't there before, just like a bathroom that appeared out of nowhere when he considered tearing off a rather nice replica of Da Vinci's _Annunciation _angels and taking a piss on it to make his stance on this bullshit was as clear as yellow.

Dean's cool-down was eighteen days long.

He never once stopped trying to get to get to his brother.

And Castiel watched him, and searched for Sam, but he was not the Castiel that _would_ be, he was Castiel that _was_, and he knew nothing about what he _would_ be prepared to do for Dean.

This was Castiel's beginning.

* * *

**Please put stuff in the spare change box.**

**l**

**l**

**V**


	2. Billie Jean

_A/N: Hi, my name is King, didn't do homework: too busy being Batman, and I don't own Supernatural._

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**MUCH TOO SOON**

**Ch2: ****Billie Jean**

Zachariah's bald head was shaped exactly like the tip of Dean's dick.

The thought made him chuckle darkly, but he had no illusions that he looked like little bitch to dear old Zack;Dean couldn't really move the swollen side of his mouth, and the overall effect of the whole thing couldn't have been anymore than Two-Face laughing at Gordon from his hospital bed at the pathetic fallacy of the world.

Dean spat blood after his little act of defiance earned him another backhand.

"Fuck you," he chuckled again like this shit was the funniest shit in the world. His body received more abuse. He spat to the side again, but the blood and mucus lingered on his split lip and dripped to his thigh, mingling with a large purple bruise there.

"Trouble with you Dean," Zach's pearly whites were a fine accomplishment of the dentistry, "is that by this point, your kind usually breaks. And we assign you according to the prognosis. It would do your soul well to give it up."

"Not 'till you tell me Sammy's 'kay."

Zach sighed through his grin. "Your monkey brain can't even comprehend why you're going to hell, can it?"

"Don't give a shit," Dean spat again, literally, as bits of blood sprayed from his mouth. "Sounds like hell's got itself a new player. Tell me 'bout my brother, and we'll call it even, yeah? One less angel dick to keep on a payroll. What d'you say, Zach?"

To that, Zachariah rolled his beady eyes and extracted a thin surgical blade from his pristine suit.

It was all so mundane.

_Here we go,_ Dean thought and held his breath. It wasn't all that mundane to him, but Zach's dragging footsteps approached him. His shoes were nice, perfectly clean, of course, except the soles, Dean knew: they had blood on them. Not just Dean's blood, oh no, he should ever be so lucky. Imbedded in the patterns of the rubber soles of Zach's Armanis was dried blood and skin and god knows what else from every lucky resident of the Happy Complex.

Angel rehab, he was told once, and had personally found it an understatement, was gutting rack. A rack where they tied you up and stripped you of your dignity and clothes and _skin_.

Dean didn't have it bad. They marched him through the long hallways full of in-house wards, and he saw what was actually bad, and it made him so sick he lost the beer and burgers from the greenroom faster than they managed to strip him from tools of suicide, shove him into a bare room, and call it a night.

The Host of Heaven was helping people out of hell by peeling their skin and pulling out fingernails from their sockets and then fingers from their joints.

Hallelujah.

Ah, but Zack was standing over him now, his crotch even with Dean's eyelevel, his blade so close to his back where already two long and narrow strips of skin were gaping from his shoulder blades. Zach talked him through it, made up a story about every precise slice of metal through membrane, kept silent when skin separated from his flesh just to have Dean hear the wet rag sound it made, and he heard it, through his own shouts, he heard it.

But it was only twice.

This was to be the third.

"Let's try this again, Dean," Zach was still smiling, and at this point Dean was sure Zachariah actually thought it was a comforting gesture. Smiling was human, it was soothing, Zach must have thought as his razor sun razor right under the skin of the first cut that never stopped bleeding. He smiled when he separated the skin from fat and pulled _up_.

It hurt. It hurt him to the very core; it hurt his body and his mind, and he knew at the very front of his mind that there were fates much worse than this, this was nothing compared to what he heard and saw and _smelled_ from rooms that weren't his own, and it was a lingering reminder that others had it much worse, but it was of little consolation.

Dean was hissing for a while, a long while after Zach had stopped. Zach stopped, but he was not finished.

If Zachariah managed to keep Dean, he would have been finished only when Dean was dead.

Fate had other plans, and there was an argument to be made about which was better.

There were the voices and shuffling of two more people in Dean's private torture chamber.

Two more. Dean exhaled so heavily that blood came out of his mouth again, and he curled into himself and turned away from them. It wasn't hard. He was already on the floor.

A voice Dean recognized from the corner of his mind was speaking to Zach, except Dean couldn't place the memory. It welcomed him with open arms of a stranger; it was like a home that wasn't his, but could be.

"— is going to happen. You know Raphael better than to doubt her."

"All-business, I see. Oh, but Uriel, do try to explain to him to our brother he is on Earth now. Relax, Castiel. Enjoy the finer things."

The third-wheel to Dean's beating party finally spoke, and the devil was in the details.

The physical voice of Castiel was gruff and stiff and terrifying, and Dean suppressed the comfort it falsely gave him, because for all its comfort, it was hell on Earth, blade in the fatty layer under his skin, Dean's mother sizzling on the ceiling of Sam's nursery.

It made Dean Winchester scared.

It was a strange experience; there was no gun at his head or immediate danger of being killed where he stood. But that _voice_. When Castiel spoke, Dean wished Zach would carry on, anything, so he would have an excuse to scream loud and tune out that _voice_. Anything, everything, because fear crippled men and Dean wasn't afraid of anything Zach and Uri could throw at him, but he was afraid of the low rumble in this Castiel's voice.

"Zachariah, I have no time for this. I am here under no-one's sanction and my time is running short. This place was difficult to find."

"Oh, but do you like it?"

There was a pause, and Dean assumed the scary-voice was looking around. Looking at the walls and carpet and _Dean_.

Apparently, so was good-old Uri.

"You!" Uriel lived up to his reputation of his short attention span and circled Dean's crippled body. "Still here? No one wants to take you home?"

"What, Uri, like what you see?" Dean spat.

"This one's proven himself to be a rather difficult case. I'm considering taking him on myself," Zach said with a sweet welcome.

"Anything," Uriel parroted, and it was creepy and disturbing, because when angels laughed, they laughed like psychopaths. "Just put some clothes on him. You do want clothes, you mindless ape, don't you?"

"Fucking tell me what happened to Sammy and I'll wear a fucking bridal gown, whatever you want, baby—"

"Brothers," the low and throaty baritone broke their banter, and Dean had no objection to shutting the fuck up and retreating into his mind, "time is of the essence."

"You have my support," Uriel's sly dog grin left his face, and he seemed to have sobered up immediately.

Dean would have been more interested if he wasn't busy being a coward.

"Of course you have my support, brother," Zach said, but it sounded more like a hiss. "But, if I may, it may be unwise to return alone at this point."

"I know. I'm considering my options."

"Shall we take arms, then?"

"We should not. It's too early."

"Then you have to return to your garrison. And disguise your trip here."

There was a charged sigh. It came from somewhere closer than Dean would have traded ten years in hell to move just an inch away from himself.

"With Balthazar, or perhaps I will have Rachel—"

And then there was a pause.

Dean cowered away, no longer able to pretend he didn't exist because he felt – he physically _felt_ like he existed.

It scared him.

"I will not return."

Uriel was all smiles and pleasantries again.

"You have to return. You can't be on Earth without orders."

"I have a higher calling."

It sounded like an excuse Dean would make at a strip club. Castiel spoke definitely, and it reminded Dean the way his father sometimes said "it is because I say so." Dean, who was beaten, cut and peeled like an orange by Zack the Guardian Angel for at least a week, Dean, who didn't have much of anything to fear, got goosebumps, because he felt noticed by something that was better off ignoring his existence.

And it wasn't just him.

Uri looked like his bladder had spontaneously shrunk.

Zack recovered first, Uriel followed, and Dean was left with the general impression that he will never recover in his life.

"Excellent. If you think you can bring yourself to take charge of one, I will give you a ward. I have some you would get along with swimmngly."

"It doesn't matter," Castiel sighed, and even his defeated voice was formidable. But it was closer, oh, so much closer. Dean could hear footsteps behind him, next to him, and he shrunk in his spot on the floor and breathed like the air had a sales tax on it.

To his left now, oh Dean, don't stare, don't look, close your eyes, don't provoke it.

The smell of iron, stale and clotted in his torn palms, it entered his nostrils before he realized his hands were free and he used them to cover his face.

And then—

Coarse fingertips, calloused and with blunt jagged fingernails, wrapped around his wrist.

Dean flinched, and tried retreating into himself, but the angel, Castiel, was it, tugged at his hand instead of pulling, and Dean, God only knew why, gave in, not because he knew it would be futile to resist, but because the tug was an _order._

_Oh fuck_.

Another hand rested on his shoulder as the hand – the hand with the cursed Triquetra on it – got tugged and guided away until Castiel slid his hand into Dean's and tangled their fingers so that their wrists were touching.

Dean didn't feel the fire that came with it, not in his body at least, but he burned inside in a way he couldn't understand.

He wanted to hiss at the pain that wasn't there, but the hand on his shoulder was strangely familiar.

"Taking on a ward should give you clearance to stay on Earth for a while," Zach thought aloud somewhere far away from Dean's very selective consciousness. "And I mean no disrespect, but troubled souls are a heavy burden, brother. You are not taking in a pet rock."

There was a dull burning in his wrist, either from soreness or actual physical heat of Castiel, and all too soon Castiel's finders were sliding between his and separating.

The Triquetra didn't go anywhere.

But, under a tan cuffing of some sort of coat, Dean saw an identical spiral branded onto a wrist that wasn't his.

"Why would a rock make a pet?" Castiel asked, and the low thunder in his voice was genuinely curious.

"He means you have to take responsibility for your ward," Uriel helped without a single shred of judgment at Castiel's misunderstanding.

"Of course," said Castiel.

"Then I'll remove him from the list, but do reconsider with that one. He's proven to be very difficult."

"It neither matters nor it is reversible. It's already done," there was a rustle of a sleeve hiking up.

"…I'll remove him from the list."

"Do we have anything else to discuss?"

"No. Please leave."

And there were footsteps, fading, two sets of them, and Dean felt exposed more than just naked skin under a blanket of bruises and cuts. He actually, God smite him on the spot, wanted Zach back, because whatever scared Zach scared Dean tenfold.

The silence stretched.

Castiel, Dean better remember that, though he doubted he will ever be allowed to forget, wore a damned tan trench coat, of all things.

Dean's vision was blurry and bloody, and he was tired, so tired, but he could make out the soft outlines of Castiel's face, the light stubble, the hair that probably never experienced a hairbrush, and eyes, those blue eyes.

Ah, but how could he forget.

"You," Dean hissed, and it was all he managed to hiss. He couldn't remember any of the snarky things he was prepared to say when someone finally decided to man up take charge of him. He couldn't even remember why he was there, or his name, or his breath. There was nothing in his world anymore, nothing except those kind blue eyes that, in their kindness, burned him hotter than hell.

"Oh," Castiel sounded terrifying, even in soft surprise. "You have met me?"

Dean just stared up from the floor. He didn't stare very far. He realized that instead of bending over him like Castiel did when he took his hand, the angel was squatting to his level.

Imagine that.

"When?"

Dean looked up glared for a moment that lasted a lifetime.

And just like that, the moment was gone.

_No. _

_No_, he sobered up, repressing everything and manning the fuck up.

Castiel allowed a generous amount of time to pass before he accepted that Dean was not going to talk to him.

At all.

Castiel just nodded.

"Did you come here wearing clothes?" he sounded rhetorical and looked around.

Dean's clothes were bloody and torn when he got there, and they made him lose them somewhere along with losing some of his skin and most of his dignity.

Sam and his home-décor fetish would have a thing to two to tell these dicks about their choices of furniture, but Dean wasn't even sure there was a Sam left to tell anybody anything.

Castiel looked him over then, everywhere, and Dean felt more exposed than should have been possible. Blue eyes trailed over his swollen lip, over his black eye, over bruises on his chest, new cuts and old scars, down his empty stomach, over his thighs and down his bruised legs.

This would have been an appropriate time for Dean to unfold himself to ask if the bastard if liked what he saw, but Dean was set on saying nothing, and Castiel was too busy inspecting the damage to his goods.

"For all it's worth," Castiel said evenly, and Dean didn't much care for Blue-Eyes trying to suppress the bass in his voice for the sake of friendliness. If anything, it added an edge to something already so dangerous. "I'm glad they did not try to break you in with intimacy."

Dean met the blue eyes and glared fire and brimstone.

Apparently, he looked like he was asking a question.

"I would know from your spirit, not your body."

_Oh, fuck this. _

"I am not current on the procedure, but I believe I should take you home now."

Castiel didn't fly.

It was one of the first angelic oddities Dean realized about his new fucking Guardian Master Bates. He didn't mojo any miracles of clean laundry or give the gift of sight to female drivers.

Castiel walked. Well, he glided, really, and Dean suspected that if his coat was lighter, it would have billowed behind him in a shape of dirty wings.

Dean knew he had to follow.

He got up, as naked and bloody as the day Mary Winchester went into one of the most difficult labors Lawrence General had ever seen, straightened his shoulders and gritted his teeth so hard that one of his fillings fell out.

Pain was nothing.

There was nothing Castiel could do to him that wasn't already done.

Men weren't afraid of pain, or scary shit with wings.

He could do this.

He could wait.

If being marched naked through the hallways of angel rehab was something that had to happen, he would let it happen.

He had to get to Sam.

But Castiel blocked his door, and Dean was half-tempted to try and push him out of the way. Antagonizing an angel looked good on paper, but not if those stupid blue eyes could freeze him solid in a pool of his own blood and sweat. Antagonizing an angel, this angel, was something else in practice.

He hoped this guy didn't hold petty grudges and he really hoped he could keep his teeth.

Castiel leveled him with a glare, and for some reason the blue in his eyes seemed a little duller.

Uriel returned just in time to save Dean from being obliterated on the spot.

"He was in a rough shape when we came in. Ezakiel said he was in a fight. We fixed his things, these are his clothes. Though you should put him in the back seat, much easier to clean. He'll ruin your upholstery."

Uriel also handed Castiel Dean's pistol, two knives, an empty flask he'd used interchangeably for either holy water and holy oblivion, his bracelets and his necklace. "Return him these whenever you see fit, or not at all, and—" Uri's mug caught something on Dean's face and he stopped talking.

Castiel stared at Uriel like he was about to obliterate him as well, and brave Uri, God bless his soul or whatever angels had in their nuggets, actually flinched under the stare. "What do you know. Little monkey's actually terrified of you."

Trench-coat-and-eyes turned his all-obliterating stare back Dean, who also flinched.

"I imagine that is bad," his voice finally thundered.

"Not for this one."

"I don't see how," Castiel handed Dean his clothes from so far away that Dean actually had to lean in to reach them. The loose skin on his back whined, and hell only knew how much it hurt. Dean figured the son of a bitch did it on purpose, so he had half the mind to throw his own stuff at his face in a petty attempt at defiance.

But the idea of being marched down naked came back to him, so he pulled on his boxers slowly and without any excessive movements.

Castiel was infinitely patient, and Dean took his sweet time. He tried using as few back muscles as he could, but he could still feel them rippling though open air. It was excruciating, it burned as if Zack's blade was cutting him up all over again; the dried blood that stitched his old scars together broke almost immediately, and the back of his shirt started soaking with blood and puss right away.

When he was dressed, Castiel simply glared at him and left the room, and Dean followed him with his chin high.

There wasn't anyone to appreciate the pride with which he marched himself. The hallways were empty and silent, save the quiet whimpers coming from the rooms exactly like Dean's. He felt himself a martyr, a hope for them all, though they couldn't see him or possibly know about his existence. Dean was the epitome of Man.

And he was a man until the line walk took too long and the agony crippled him into a sullen hunch, but the bittersweet irony of it all only started burning Dean's mind when he saw the most ridiculous thing, and nothing could really prepare him for it.

Castiel's car was a dark blue SmartCar.

It was embarrassing. Dean repressed the agony of his body to mentally make fun of the poor bastard whose nuts were traded for that thing before he realized Castiel was approaching it with intent of mounting it.

And, oh, but Dean couldn't resist, because no amount of bullshit would pound the Dean Winchester out of Dean Winchester.

"Do you want me to get in the back so I don't ruin your upholstery?"he hissed with little humor.

The angel with absolutely no need to compensate for anything with the car he drove or the clothes he wore just sort of glared at Dean, and Dean minded his back and jumped into the shotgun of the SmartCar. If he were to get smote, at least he would take the damn thing to hell with him.

It was much later that Dean realized Castiel wasn't really looking to smite anyone. It was just sort of the way he generally looked at things like furniture, food, doors, Dean, pedestrians and house slippers, all fire and flames. But didn't get to know this for a very long time.

Castiel, and now Dean, apparently, lived on the ninth floor of a building that wasn't quite tall enough to get branded a skyscraper, at the very edge of Chicago.

Angel rehab was in Chicago.

They were still in Illinois.

Dean pretended to be concerned with pain and suffering and conspicuously waited for red lights to make his run for it, but it was like Castiel was mojoing every light green. When red finally came on ahead of them and Dean's hand slowly slithered to the door handle, Castiel pressed the child lock without as much as looking at Dean. He then ran the damned light.

The drive was difficult. Dean leaned forward to protect his back with as much of an air barrier between it and the seat as he could manage in the cramped confines of the SmartCar. His back burned and every breath he took burned right through it and into his lungs. Purposely or otherwise, Castiel managed to count every pothole with his SmartCar, and it ripped at his skin, and Dean thought of running even harder despite being barely able to move without hissing or having spasms.

It was all a blur, really. Exhaustion was sipping from his body into his mind.

Before he knew it, he was sitting on his knees in a beige leather couch, hugging a cushion.

Castiel helped him out of his bloody shirt.

He accepted the help before he realized who was giving it, and once he realized, the best he could do was kick at his kidnapper's kneecaps and back away until his wounds pressed into the wall and it dawned on him just how much of a trapped animal Dean Winchester had become.

Castiel's shoes were gone.

So were Dean's.

There was carpet under his feet.

A kitchen with knives to his right.

Castiel had a first-aid kit in his hand.

He shook it like a treat Sammy would dangle to one of the strays he always managed to find and shelter from rain in their motel room.

Dean narrowed his eyes and glared at blue, really glared this time, blind to most things around him except the infinity of the blue irises.

Then, there was stubble. And hair that survived a tornado.

And dark circles under the blue eyes.

And then there was nothing but a tired sigh.

Castiel picked up Dean's shirt, gathered his shoes, opened one of the doors behind him and disappeared through it. When he emerged, Dean's things were no-longer with him. The first-aid kid was also gone.

Dean watched from his corner as the angel – the freaking angel, and Dean had yet to wrap his mind around the fact that he was screwed, so fucking screwed - went from noticing his existence to completely ignoring it. He passed Dean and Dean held his breath, expecting to burn in Castiel's dust, but nothing really happened. Castiel walked by him, threw his GayMobile keys on the kitchen counter and filled the eclectic kettle with water.

Dean watched him as he moved. He glided across the room in casual fury, lively and with purpose and without making any extra movements. He made no sound with the occasional exception of the faint carpet rustle under his socked feet. He still had his damned trench coat on, and it was a little bit like he had forgotten that his coat, and his whole corporal body along with it, existed in the first place.

He fussed with papers, cleared surfaces of sharp objects and child-proofed his bare living room by tucking in stray chairs and closing the power outlet covers.

Who the fuck even had power outlet covers.

Dean had barely noticed himself sliding down the wall in the corner, save for the friction of tender skin and no skin at all against the pores in the paint.

The fuss was lulling him to sleep, and there wasn't much he could do anyway except give the angel the lip. It didn't matter much if Castiel had anything planned for him; be it torture or a beating, or if Castiel wanted to play therapist or the latter without 'the' – there was little Dean could do. Maybe the phones worked so he could call Sam or Bobby.

Oh, but he couldn't.

Bobby would do his Technology hoodoo and find him, and if his guardian or whatever scared Zach into nearly pissing himself, Dean wasn't gonna let anyone in his family poke _it_ with a really long stick. He would wait, take whatever it is that he had coming, get out, find Sammy and repress everything that would happen in-between.

It would be okay, he told himself as his eyelids grew heavy.

He could do this.

If he could just…

Close his eyes for a moment.

And…

…sleep.

The click of the kettle ripped him from the tight grip of unconsciousness, his body shuddered, but all Dean managed was a crack of blurry vision.

Castiel sort of popped into existence above him and Dean crawled into his corner and hissed in pain. Castiel set a mug of hot tea on the carpet not too far away from him and rattled an orange bottle and at Dean's eyelevel. He was pointing at label Dean couldn't read anyway.

Dean closed his eyes again and saw darkness.

* * *

"Lie on your stomach."

Dean knew of several other circumstances under which Castiel could order him around with these exact words. Having his body punctured and repunctured with sawing supplies wasn't the worst of them. But he closed his eyes and steadied himself for accepting it when such order actually came.

Back outside his mind, Castiel stood over him, ever so patient, and Dean wanted to test that patience, he really did, but now wasn't the time.

The time would be when he wasn't dependant on the bastard's handouts.

He just had to be patient, grind his teeth and bend over.

So he did.

The panorama window of Castiel's living room was dark, and there wasn't much of a panorama to see; just the roofs of some old buildings and a few empty streets. It was either really late or really early, too late to do anything or too early to get up.

Dean was gingerly manhandled to his feet and put away into the same room just like his shirt was put away hell only knew how many hours ago. It looked like a guest bedroom, but Dean wasn't really expecting a dungeon. He wasn't expecting anything at all.

He was still in that groggy and hungry state in-between the reality and the dreamworld, so when the angel pushed him towards the guest bed that was now Dean's, Dean climbed into it, and bore his wounds to his enemy.

The enemy wasted no time.

Scolding ribbons of fucking fire danced down his back almost immediately; there was no warning, no distraction, nothing. Just pain of warm water licking away dried blood and skin.

He hissed and imagined treating the claw wounds left on his brother's body by one thing or another, and Sam treating Dean's wounds the same way, except these had to look worse. These weren't scars of battle. These were scars left on his body by the victors.

But the thought of Sammy, and maybe that was what threw him off enough to grunt "how bad is it?" without realizing it wasn't Sammy tending him. Or maybe it was the fever. He was burning up. The meds must have been antibiotics.

"It isn't bad," he felt the gruff tremble of baritone in the fingertips almost caressing his wounds with pain. "It must feel like your skin is missing."

When Dean didn't say anything, the bastard decided to fucking _elaborate_.

"It is mostly intact. It is difficult to cut someone for an extensive period of time when there is nothing left to cut. It only feels like your skin was peeled because the blade is inserted under it horizontally. Like so."

A hand, so close to where Dean's face rested on a pillow, and right in the frame of his sight, stroked an edge of the adjacent pillow slowly, then slid under the fold so gently that it looked like Castiel's fingers were making love rather than describing an atrocity.

Dean refused to shut his eyes.

Fire eventually turned into acid that burned exactly in those folds under his skin Castiel was so keen on demonstrating, and it burned even as the needle and thread pierced his flesh.

After all was done and cleaned – and this actually killed Dean in a darkly hilarious sort of way – Castiel fumbled with band-aids and put about fifty of them right on top of the stitches, and it undid the stitches of the entire experience.

The _thing_ had no idea what the fuck _it_ was doing.

* * *

**Feed the author pls**

**l**

**l**

**V**


	3. Everything He Says About You is a Lie

_A/N: My name is King, I own a rainbow monkey hat, and I don't own Supernatural._

* * *

**MUCH TOO SOON**

**Ch3: Everything He Says About You is a Lie**

Castiel was rigid.

He kept to himself and glared at Dean whenever Dean had the audacity to come out at the designated dinner times.

At a point when the stitches in his back no-longer needed a constant gauze change to prevent the seeping blood and puss from soaking not-his sheets and not-his shirts, Castiel had yet to do anything about Dean, really, except occasionally notice his presence and make him food. And Dean chanced upon impoverished people in starving rural towns that would give up their entire birthday suits to be kept and fed.

The first time the angel ordered him to join him for dinner was something like two days after he dragged Dean into his apartment and locked him in it, just when Dean was considering sneaking out and stealing food he wasn't sure Castiel even had.

So when Dean was beginning to frantically phase his room and act more and more like a hungry, trapped dog, Castiel knocked and announced dinner, and it was then that Dean knew Castiel knew exactly how to keep Dean complacent and out of sight. And it was disturbing.

Their dinner was mashed potatoes and salad. It matched Castiel's Sunday school outfit.

But he helped himself to seconds and thirds without saying anything or giving into Castiel's scrutinizing stare.

"Clear the table," Castiel told him and turned to take his leave.

Dean was okay with that. Old habits died hard, though, and when he wasn't paying strict mind to his temper and his cheek, pieces of his mind slipped out. Things like "what am I even doing here" weren't doing Dean any favors.

Castiel stopped and tilted his head. "You are clearing the table," he enlightened him.

Dean snorted. "I mean _here_. Sorry to compare dick sizes n'all, but Zack and his camp were on top of their shit."

This was the first coherent thing he told Castiel during their slumber party. It was a cheeky thing to say, ballsy even, except Dean felt his balls were under a threat, so he'd rather not go there. And fuck, he should have kept his mouth shut, because he found himself suddenly talking to the angel's front instead of his retreating back. Dean found he much preferred to be blindsided.

Castiel just glared, apparently offended at the words Dean had said, implied, and thought, ever, in his life, because everything about Dean suddenly became offensive and, apparently, hostile. He bit the inside of his cheek and chanted himself to shut the fuck up and pretend to yawn or something the next time he felt inclined to open his stupid trap.

When Castiel finally spoke, the fury in his voice wasn't all that furious.

"I don't understand anything of what you've just said."

And, alas, that pretty much summed up their entire predicament.

Dean blinked and went on being a moron and threading in shallow waters.

"Buddy, I'm asking you why you're keeping me here. Feeding me. You can just, you know," Dean walked his fingers along his palm, but when Castiel measured him with that are-you-even-speaking-my-language glare, he finished verbally: "let me graze freely on the pastures of the world?"

There was a strange nod. "You don't understand hell at all."

It wasn't a question.

"You don't appear to like Zachariah or Uriel, so perhaps I can help you understand."

Castiel was more terrifying up-close than behind Dean or next to Dean or sitting a safe enough distance away from Dean so that if glare turned to snare, Dean could bolt the fuck out of the path of raining grasshoppers on flaming cutlery.

But, as he approached him in a menacing beeline, the angel, barefoot, suit and tie and no trench coat this early in the morning, was something so formidable that Dean felt a stitch rip open against the granite that dug into his back.

He gripped one hand on the edge and inched the other to the dirty knife in the sink.

A few more steps, no, just one; Castiel moved with fluidity and grace Dean never thought he'd ever understand. He was one intimidating step away from him, too close and… shorter than Dean by a few inches.

But height didn't matter if you could crush a skull with a flick of a wrist.

And then Castiel crossed that line between intimidation and appropriateness." Dean's skin crawled where breath that wasn't his brushed against his skin.

His fingers wrapped around the handle of the knife.

He was a hunter.

He sliced throats and blinked later.

That blade was against the stubble before Dean blinked.

Castiel didn't blink. At all.

It was all sort of surreal, to have an angel at knifepoint like this, and it quickly dawned on Dean how little security it provided, how it could only annoy, and he felt afraid, truly afraid, that Castiel could kill him, would kill him, and he would never be able to drag his idiot brother out of trouble because Dead would be too dead to do it.

And then Sam would be dead, and it would all be his fault.

And that greasy knife, it could so easily slice through the stitches in his back and his arms and legs and thighs and it was a wonder, really, that Castiel didn't pick up right where Zach had left off, and Dean was stupid, so stupid, because he forgot that he deserved this.

Castiel sort of didn't even notice the knife.

"Zachariah's method is quick and not particularly pleasant. Its purpose is to make you love yourself, or at the very least, pity yourself enough to want better. But it is just that. Unpleasant. You don't understand hell torture, you don't appear to even understand that you are going to hell unless someone interferes. You don't understand the institution and you don't understand what you have done to warrant hell. You need to understand that you are _here_ to receive help."

There was no passion in Castiel's words; it wasn't at all like a vicious word vomit or an inspiring rant, not in a way Dean had ever heard. To Dean, it sounded like Truth with a capital T. But Dean heard lies.

"Then why don't you work on that?" he spat.

Castiel became distracted by a cupboard behind them, "there is no point in my trying when you resist being saved."

"I don't resist anything, I just want to get the fuck out of here and make sure my brother is alive because you assholes grabbed me right out of a freakin' fight—"

"You never told me your name."

Dean blinked dumbly. There was no way in hell Castiel didn't know his name.

and Castiel finally noticed the blade at his throat. The stubble there brushed against it, and he must have felt the friction. Dean gulped away his stupidity and slowly, ever so slowly, inched the knife away.

Castiel seemed annoyed in an emotionally-void sort of way.

"Sorry," Dean muttered.

"You are not sorry."

Dean pursed his lips.

"John. My name is John. Jenkins."

"And you are a liar."

And it was like that for the next twelve hours because Dean could only go on for so long without begging to be punched in the mug.

Castiel called him to dinner where they sat in awkward silence while Dean ate and Castiel stared at him, and Dean would occasionally stutter stupid shit and regret it later. Castiel would leave him breakfast, too, and then disappear somewhere for the rest of the day.

Dean, being Dean, scavenged the entire apartment. But the phones didn't actually work, the TV didn't actually work, the closets didn't actually have the typical junk people spent their lives hoarding, but what did Dean know, he lived out of motel rooms and the back seat of the impala all his life.

There was Ikea furniture. It was white and gray and fake and terrible. The bottoms of the dishes and the cups had the tell-tell Ikea labels on them. The towels were Ikea, the sheets were Ikea, the "art" was Ikea.

There were three bedrooms as far as he could tell. One was his, one was empty, and the third one was the room where Dean thought Castiel had spent all of his time until he saw the angel sneak away through the front door at around 5AM after leaving powder-eggs-and-Ikea-bacon on the table.

Dean took care not to scratch any of the locks he tried to pick, but neither the front door nor Castiel's room would open, and though he put everything back exactly the way he found it, he couldn't quite shake the feeling that Castiel knew he spent the day snooping around.

"It's Dean, by the way," Dean told him during the third of their awkward dinner sessions.

Castiel nodded and watch Dean eat his green beans.

"This is where you tell me your name," Dean chewed around a mouthful.

"You know my name, you were there," there went that tilt of the head again.

Dean stared dumbly at his greens. "Oh. Do I call you that, then, or what?"

"Yes."

So naturally, Dean tried. "Castiel." The name sounded weird once it left the confines of Dean's mind where he used it as a curse on pretty much minute basis.

"Yes?" Castiel answered.

Dean got sick of the tilt-of-the-head and the status-quo bullshit as soon as Castiel got back home from wherever it was that he went every day.

"You obviously don't give a shit about my soul or whatever, I was there when you were talking to Zach, so yeah, you got your excuse to stay away from the roost, that's great, I'll give you calls, won't leave the country, and check in on Sundays. Let me the fuck go."

Castiel was shrugging out of his coat when Dean ambushed him as he was sneaking back into his Ikea shrine. He was barely out of his shoes, and if Dean had allowed him to take off the shoes, he would never hear the bastard high-tailing it to his room.

"Why?"

There went that fucking tilt of the head again. It was like that science experiment where Dean was the frog on the tray and the freakin' angel of the freakin' Lord was a curious fifteen year old with a scalpel and a biology apron.

"Because this is fucking pointless. You aren't…"

"I am not what, Dean?"

Dean was tired of threading around the bullshit.

"Don't 'Dean' me. You aren't beating the shit out of me or talking about my feelings so what the fuck do you expect me to do, write sad poems about how sorry I am for being born so I eventually write enough to trade for a ticket out of hell? All I know is I was outside, and now I'm here, and I don't get it. I don't… I don't know what you want form me, okay?"

The trench coat never folded neatly and came out all crumpled, and it never occurred to Castiel that he should hang it up instead of setting it on a shelf. And fuck, it sure as hell wouldn't be Dean to tell him otherwise

"What do you want, Dean?"

"I want to know my brother is okay."

The angel stepped out of his shoes and took his sweet-ass time replying.

"Wait for me in your room, I will wash my hands and take a look at your back."

That cooled Dean right the fuck down. Those hands, those dry and calloused hands with short fingernails were as capable of holding a blade as they were of holding Dean down and making him scream in more ways than he knew. He didn't forget, he never forgot, that this _thing_, this _thing_ that radiated power in _its_ wake and made Dean want to kneel at the tips of _its_ dirty coat in blistering fear, it could do things to him because it was its job to slice at his body until his penance was paid.

"Fuck that," Dean hissed and backed away from reality and the argument he had no business starting, "No."

"No?"

"No. You don't fucking get to do this bullshit."

"Do what?"

"Fucking make me dinners and cut me the fuck up before you feed me. Fuck this. Go fuck yourself," fear panic, _no, calm the fuck down Dean,_ but it was too late because the bile of fear was already blocking his airways. "And back the fuck up, buddy. Back up. I'll punch you in the face, I swear to God, back the fuck away from me."

All things considering, Dean realized he was having a fit about half-way to never. It registered, but at the same time, it didn't. Dean was always the sort to beat all the other kinds out of his sandbox, and when the tantrum was done and over with and Dean locked himself in his stupid Ikea room and really thought about what he had said, it occurred to him he was acting like a little bitch to someone who had the power to remove his tongue so he never talked shit again.

At the moment, though, Castiel took a step out of Dean's personal bubble, but it was small step, and Dean knew he'd feel crowded by Castiel for as long as they were on the same continent.

"I don't have the training to do that," he said.

"The fuckin' what?"

"I don't understand human mind enough to know how to successfully apply torture. You were there. You know I'm not a proper guardian angel, Dean."

"So what, the reason I have all my fingers is 'cause they didn't show you how? Well then. Wanna learn? 'Cause I've cut off fingers. Not my own, but fuck, it'll be learning experience for both of us."

"Dean—"

"And don't 'Dean' me, you know fucking what, I don't' fucking know, okay? I don't know anything about you bastards. I don't fucking know what I'm doing here or what you're gonna do to me or when the fuck I can see my brother again, and I don't really care what you do. Stop dragging it out. It's like pulling teeth. Jesus."

"Jesus never pulled teeth-"

So Dean found himself sulking in his room. It was stupid, really. If there would be no torture, not yet, anyway, Castiel could just starve him to death, or beat the fuck out of him, or _fuck_ him, and for all it was worth, Dean would fucking take it, down his throat, up his ass, hell, Castiel could cut a hole in him and fuck him anywhere he wanted, and he wouldn't fucking care as long as there was an end to it.

He just didn't understand – didn't _want_ to understand - what the fucking point was, of this, of all of it, because Dean was fine with going to hell.

Castiel didn't seem to understand that it was okay to just let Dean stumble his way through life and let it end however destiny wanted it to end.

Thing was, Dean couldn't exactly keep the thought in his mind forever because that was literally the timeframe he had: forever, indefinitely. With the lack of anything better to do other than to curse his own existence, Dean dozed off. He woke up every few hours because his instincts kept telling him he was in deep shit and he better claw his way out, but a lifetime of teaching himself hunter discipline was all moot when he was someone's prisoner.

-0-

"He recognized me," Castiel told Rachel. Her posture stiffened at being addressed, but she learned to never flinch in his presence.

She nodded and offered no input.

"Neither Zachariah nor Uriel suspect, and it is for the best. But this troubles me. I have never manifested myself before the Winchesters. Perhaps time travel. I don't understand why such need would occur in the future."

"Dean may be able to perceive you. He may have simply felt your presence throughout his lifetime."

"It's difficult to tell," he mused aloud. "I don't think this to be the case. He recognizes my vessel, and only vaguely."

"Did you decide it is worth an inquiry?"

"Not yet."

They were silent for an eternity after that. The world unfolded below them, wars were waged, kings were overthrown, but they sat and thought and enjoyed the temporary peace under the sheltered security of a Western sail of the Kingdom of Heaven.

They watched over humanity in quiet fascination. Fascination was never short of what Castiel had always felt; the potential of humanity was so great even he sometimes struggled to comprehend how something so vast and seemingly disjointed functioned in such wonderful unison towards a goal it could not possibly understand.

His garrison, Rachel even, they all functioned perfectly, too, but it was a created perfection, not one learned though centuries of labor and culture. Humanity was beautiful even in its flaws.

Castiel found himself lucky he had the privilege to observe it from up close. Dean Winchester stumbled. He stumbled through life, stumbled around his very existence, and now he stumbled around Castiel.

Castiel only felt sorry that he could do nothing about the fate that awaited him.

"What of Samuel," Castiel inquired, and at once Rachel was there with him and at the same time wasn't; she was everywhere all at once and nowhere but on the tallest pillar on the very edge of Heaven next to Castiel.

"The youngest Winchester is still missing," she reported, and Castiel could sense weariness in her manner. He knew it for what it was.

"You are weary of your orders. Tell me why."

She assured him she had no doubts.

"We are in a state of civil war. You sit and await the day I order you to slaughter your own sisters and brothers. Of course you have doubts. I understand them and I cannot judge you on them. All I need is your certainty that, when this order comes, you will carry it out."

"You have it," she reassured him again, but she told him little of her heart.

"That is not all."

"It isn't," she agreed, knowing the futility of lying. "I have doubts about…" but she could not finish, and he helped her.

"Me."

She said nothing.

"You are allowed to have doubts, Rachel. I am not an archangel. Tell me what troubles you."

"You always loved humanity; it was always so dear to you. I don't question you, but I… doubt. I doubt your resolve to break the Winchester when the time comes. But it is just two men in face of billions. You must. I know you will. But I doubt, Castiel. I doubt you and I'm sorry."

Castiel took another eternity to consider this, but when he looked down, his mind was not looking for expired empires or glory of God in the simplest things. He watched Dean Winchester wrack havoc in the room Castiel had given him. Dean's mind was uneasy and his soul was in turmoil; he was angry and confused and Castiel could offer him little comfort except watch him and soften the impact of his firsts against walls.

Dean was a fascinating creature, but Castiel felt more fascination for him than he knew he should. He knew Rachel sensed this. He understood her concern.

"If I find myself to be a coward, you may take over as my instrument."

"Is that-"

"That is an order, Rachel, yes." And at once, her mind was at ease.

Dean was asleep in his anger.

Castiel's descent to Dean felt heavier than all those prior.

* * *

Dean was dreaming of a red tree.

He was sitting on it, and it was red, and it was a tree, and it was sort of there, so he didn't mind dreaming about it. His red tree was actually kind of therapeutic. So what eventually woke him wasn't a nightmare. It was a faint rustle.

The tree was gone; he was in his bed, and he wasn't alone.

So before he woke up completely, he reached for Ruby's knife that wasn't there on the motel nightstand that wasn't there. What was there was a knee digging into the small of his back and a hand on the back of his neck, steadying him.

He was letting his wounds air, so he was half-naked and under Castiel and it stung his fucking soul.

The angel was running balls of alcohol-soaked cotton down his back. Dean could smell it.

He bucked.

"What the _fuck_."

"Your body would be healing better," a gruff voice informed him from its mighty place behind him, "if you didn't make every effort to rip out your stitches, Dean."

Dean tried shaking him off again, just to make a point.

"And I understand your predicament. I, however, have nine million siblings. I neither understand privacy nor am I willing to learn it."

Dean said nothing, and their silence stretched.

"Although I didn't realize you were confused and needed company and explanations. I assumed you knew. I was wrong. I will answer your questions, but you will answer mine."

Dean hated witches. Demons and vampires and whatever else obscure monstrosity happened to be his monster of the day, that he could handle; they'd come at him teeth blazing and balls flaming. They could use knives, bats or guns, hell, they could use whatever sharp thing happened to grow on them, but they would always use weapons, and so could Dean.

Witches, on the other hand, were cunts. They did sneaky shit with hex bags, and it generally did little good to stab a hex bag.

Crossroad demons were on a whole other level of douchebaggery.

They used words as their weapons, and their greatest weapon was bargaining.

Castiel's bargain made whatever was left of Dean's skin crawl.

"One thing. I'll answer one thing. If I like what you're askin'."

Dean mistook the faint pressure of a kneecap by his hip as a nod.

"You're going first," he said and then hissed and swore violently when agony slid down his back in one slow and lazy drag. He clenched his fists and tried bucking again, but the motherfucker on top of him was unmovable and unresponsive.

"Don't bite your tongue," he heard and bit into the pillow. A cold hand gripped into the back of his neck to steady him, and when that didn't help, Castiel fisted his hair and held him down.

This was it, then.

Just like Zach after all.

But the product of the experience were bits of something Castiel was dropping by Dean's pillow just in his line of sight, that bastard, and Dean assumed they were fucking _peelings _of his birth suit, until a particularly long one caught his eye.

Castiel was plucking puss-covered pieces of infected thread right out of him, and then probably bathing his open flesh with peroxide.

Well, fuck.

"Your question, Dean."

The angel was cruel, too cruel, to make Dean talk through this, to open his mouth and gasp for air when pain took away his words. He tried thinking of the finer things in life. Booze. Women. Warm nights on the hood of the impala, in the solitary company of a beer and stars. Things that couldn't hurt him. Castiel could hurt him. He could hurt him in more ways than one; he had all the power, and Dean had none.

Why would he stop at opening up Dean's back, no, that would be kind of him, too kind. It was the kindness Dean didn't deserve and learned to never except unless it came from family. Castiel could hold him down by the hair easily, straddle him, tell him to bite the low thread of the silk pillowcase as he opened him in a way that was much more rewarding to him, open him – or not even bother with that – and fuck him out until his insides bled and he leaked blood and cum all over the damn bedsheets.

Castiel could do it, so easily, too. Dean could feel his power, his sheer physical power, in the strong thighs closing around his hips and pinning him down, in that hoarse breath, and Dean wasn't afraid of this part, no, he was just concerned that he was under the power of this really fucking powerful being for well over five days, and it didn't find a nasty game it wanted to play with Dean's body.

Dean only had one thing to ask _it_.

"Is my brother alive?" he spat.

"I can't answer that."

"Why not?"

There was hesitation in Castiel's medicine, and it set Dean on the edge.

"Why the f-fuck not?"

"Ah. No, Dean, I don't mean that your brother is dead. I'm just not used to being questioned. I don't know anything about your brother. I think it's for the better that I don't have anything to tell you."

A particularly nasty bit made Dean see oblivion and strong thighs trapped him and held him down. He bit down on his lip.

"Fuck. If you're gonna take a guy to bed, buy him a drink first," he hissed through teeth and blood.

Meticulous fingers treaded through his back, checking over their work, and the pain had receded enough for Dean to appreciate how gentle Castiel was with him.

This was the last of it.

Castiel eased himself off him, and Dean found himself numb and unable to will his body to move.

"I don't think giving you alcohol is a good idea, Dean."

"Why the fuck not?"

There was rustling of clothes, and Dean watched an angel collect medical refuse and wipe his fingertips clean from blood. If Dean wasn't a complete asshole, he would've maybe said thanks or acknowledged Castiel's help somehow, however temporary this kindness was, but he could never let himself forget that the creature that was unfolding itself in the darkness of Dean's jail room was a monster and Dean was its prisoner.

His monster lost _its_ coat and jacket. _Its_ tie was backwards and the sleeves of _its_ dress shirt were rolled up. He had stubble and his hair was flat on one side, his eyes were blue, the collar of his shirt had a tag sticking out, and Dean didn't mean to refer to 'it' as 'him,' except he realized Castiel was never really an 'it' to Dean.

It bothered him because he couldn't understand much of anything.

Castiel never answered.

"You callin' me a drunk?"

"Are you?"

"No."

Castiel didn't seem keen on replying to that one, either.

"You callin' me a liar?"

"I didn't say anything about you, Dean."

* * *

**Feed me pls. I'm all QQ today. **

**l**

**l**

**V**


	4. A Hate Story

_A/N: My name is King, mashed potatoes are gorss, and I don't own Supernatural._

* * *

**MUCH TOO SOON**

**Ch4: A Hate Story**

Dean had his fair share of run-ins with the feathery winged dick kind.

The run-ins almost always had to do with runaways; Sam and Dean would occasionally run into some poor bastard with Trinity tattoos, and the poor bastard would be very different from the IDs they'd find in his pockets, physically irreparable or emotionally void, and they'd try to help, but it would always end the same way. One day they'd be trying to nurse an empty thing that was a human being once, the next day the thing would evaporate into thin air.

They knew exactly to what kind of personal hell it was forced to return, and there was never a damn thing they could do about it.

Dean always wondered why the angels hated the humans they were volunteering to save.

That was the thing, though. Castiel didn't really hate Dean excessively. That much was obvious from the fact that he didn't carry on with Zach's brand of redemption, but there were times Dean attributed his little miracle to the fact that Castiel didn't feel feelings, so he didn't really hate because he didn't care enough to hate.

Castiel, who couldn't give two shits about Dean, was the sort of blessing Dean didn't much care to appreciate.

Not Castiel, and definitely not the view his pretty underwear model face provided.

Dean wasn't sure how the whole male underwear model thing actually worked, but he had the suspicion Castiel's face wasn't the thing he was supposed to be not-appreciating.

His eyes lazily traced the angel on the opposite side of the breakfast counter. Castiel's hair had apparently survived a miniature tornado and his stubble was shorter than the night before but still not clean-shaven.

At some point, Dean couldn't figure out when, he realized Castiel shaved before he went to bed, so the coarse hairs grew back just in time for him to make a public appearance in the morning.

Dean had no idea if Castiel shaved at night on purpose, or just because he didn't know any better.

And it was gross that he was beginning to notice details about stupid shit. He was going insane in boredom. A bit more, and he'd be so trapped in his mind that he'd actually start reminiscing and having coherent and deep thoughts about the meaning of life.

Castiel had an air of razor-thin serenity around him, and when Dean sometimes stood too close, this weird bubble of hyper alert calmness would envelop him, and he would feel like a dickwad afterwards because the peace around Castiel would make him forget that he was trapped here and that he had to find Sammy and that he had to carry the world on his shoulders.

A dungeon of domesticity wasn't the place nor time to feel calm.

But, resist the good things as he might because it was a Winchester Thing To Do, Dean could sort of appreciate the waste of time that was this crap because it was free time with free food. It was time he could use to think. It was the kind of time he'd usually spend on the hood of the impala with a beer in his hand and the sky up above him, with Sammy snoring a room away. It was the sort of peaceful time in-between hunts, and Dean knew how to appreciate it because it could always be his last time having a beer or seeing those stars.

Peaceful time was also the time right before shit usually hit the fan in a peculiarly epic way Dean could never come up with on his own unless he was on drugs. A whole nest of vampires with flamethrowers. The ghost of Michael Jackson. The ghost of Elvis. Fighting a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle that turned out to be a shapeshifer. Fighting a real Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Finding a literal goldmine in Washington. Finding honest-to-God Neverland. Finding out Dean was severely allergic to the thing he was supposed to be hunting and using his sinuses to track it.

That kind of thing.

So he caught himself staring at Castiel's short fingernails and appreciating how there was nothing particularly menacing about them. Cas was considerably better than killer sharks with legs and Zachariah, he decided.

"Yes, Dean?"

Castiel looked up from the paperwork he brought to breakfast, because apparently Dean was just short of hanging up posters about how he was checking him out.

Castiel's eyes were bluer than the day before.

"Nothing," Dean chewed on his toast and kept staring because it would look conspicuous if he suddenly looked away. What came from his staring was perhaps the most meaningful conversation Dean had the capacity to process without throwing a fit.

"Why do angels hate us?"

Castiel took his time, of course. His eyes focused on the page he was reading for another minute, and his calloused fingers were about to flip it over when he seemed to remember Dean's lame pick-me-up and decided to return the attention.

"Do you mean me, Dean? I don't hate you."

He looked confused.

"Don't mean you. Like, in general. Angels. Zachariah. Uriel."

"You think we hate you?"

"Well," Dean was a bit taken aback, but really, this kind of response wasn't all that new. He once met a demon that made it its life mission to shove people inside metal barrels full of water, and boil them just hot enough to keep them awake and alive for weeks of being boiled. Dean stabbed it in the middle of a rant about how it was actually doing God's work to earn itself a passage out of hell. Angels weren't like that, but then again, what did he know. "You do. Not _you_. But you, generally. Hate us, I mean. Obviously."

Castiel's brow frowned like he was computing something new and complicated.

"What?" Dean grumbled around his weird breakfast soup.

Castiel looked down and his lips folded.

"I think I understand you better, Dean."

Dean, whom Castiel apparently understood better now, shuffled in his seat.

"Ahuh," he managed without being snarky.

"Angels don't hate you, Dean. I know you don't understand this, but most angels actually love God's creation. All of God's creation."

"Then why—"

"That's for you to understand."

Dean threw his spoon and it left a trail of red mush on the counter. He'd have to clean that.

"Bullshit."

"I disagree."

Castiel had obviously seen only a fraction of what Dean had seen.

"You've been here for how long? Yeah. I'd say you're about to be hit by a learning curve of why you should go back to your cloud and hate us from afar."

Castiel looked at Dean in his alien sort of look, the way Klaatu looked at Helen, stood and collected his papers.

"No creature hates humans quite as much as humans hate themselves, Dean."

"Except Lucifer. He really hates you lot."

The stranger caught Dean in the middle of slurping down his soup because his temper left him spoonless and he didn't feel like getting any closer to Castiel to retrieve his way of eating with dignity.

Other that the spoon thing, he was quite comfortable.

He was in a reasonably firm chair a safe distance away from dick angels, Castiel was about to leave, which would put him a comfortably out of any dick angels' presence. Castiel wasn't in Napoleon mood so he wasn't invading Dean's personal space, so dick angels? Yeah. Far fucking away with a chance of fog in the afternoon.

And so the soup went straight up his nose and he sort of jumped out of his chair in a manly way when a third wheel materialized right up his personal space.

"I need to ward this apartment," Castiel said and actually – actually really really really – rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

"Sorry mate," the new arrival slurred at Castiel in snarky British. "You supposed to be hiding?"

"I am not hiding."

"Right. You're just concealing the fact that you're at this place."

Dean was discovering all sorts of expressions he never knew Cas had, or at the very least had never shown towards Dean, like various degrees of annoyance, and he kind of expected Castiel's unshaved face to crack from the emotional overload.

"Is there anything you want, Balthazar?"

"World peace," the overly cheerful asshole beamed.

"I am working on it."

Balthazar was a short thing. Not really short, considering he was about as tall as Cas, but a lot less intimidating because he was nothing short of a sparkly, bouncy fairy that had to get on his knees to count salt and liked it that way. His hair was sort of Ken to Sam's Barbie, the v-neck in his shirt was so low Dean could see his kidneys, and he gave the general impression of something you would take home from a gay bar if you were into that sort of thing.

Dean felt like he was third-wheeling Castiel's party time with a hooker in a hooker alley behind a hooker club full of gay hookers.

Balthazar was all smiles, and it made Dean even less comfortable with the whole scene, forget not one man and one dick angel, but one and a half dick angel, because if Castiel was one, Balthazar kind of looked like the half.

Meanwhile, the testosterone-challenged angel up Dean's personal space jacked his thumb at Dean and raised an eyebrow.

Castiel seemed completely unaffected by the whole thing. It was like a piece of lint sat on his coat and he was regarding it with entertainment.

"_That_'s how you got sanction to stay down here."

"_That_," Castiel looked faintly amused at both of their offended reactions, "is Dean."

Balthazar winked a greeting at him, all predatorily-like, and Dean hardened his face and stood his ground.

"A more appropriate question is why you are down here."

"Oh, you know," Balthazar steadied himself, "stuff."

"Stuff?"

"Business stuff I told everyone was doing. Don't remember what, though."

"You are not a good liar," Castiel noted.

"Yeah. But the blokes upstairs can't tell. So here I am," he took a bow and swayed a little."Tada."

Castiel regarded him evenly, and for a minute Dean actually thought Castiel would let the British faggot crash with them or something. Until, "be somewhere else, Balthazar."

"Oh, come on, you love me!"

"I do. And I will love you elsewhere. Go home, Balthazar. You're drunk."

It wasn't even the drunk part and angel part in the same sentence that made Dean snort at Balthazar's expense. It wasn't even the fact that he smelled like he took a bath and confused water with vodka and soap with cum. It was the seven year-old "am not" response he gave, like Castiel had asked him if he ate all the sprinkles from the sprinkle jar. Cas was right. This asshole was a hilariously terrible liar.

Dean leaned into his heels and readied himself for a fight when Balthazar snared at him.

"Oi, shut it, you sea-monkey."

He leaned against the counter and pouched Dean's half-finished cup of coffee. "And 'm not drunk. Hung over. Got any Tylenol? Or cable? It's Shark Week."

"I don't have television."

"Oh."

This was the sort of thing you'd ask. At least on Dean's behalf, because Dean was losing his mind in boredom to even tolerate this very pale version of Journey Shore. But Balthazar didn't ask, he just sort of accepted the lack of Shark Week as something that couldn't be challenged, and that was it.

"And you can't stay not because I'm inhospitable to you. It's because of Dean."

Balthazar snared at Dean again.

"You will be a bad influence. You lie and you drink excessively. Dean thinks _I think_ he is a liar and an alcoholic. Your presence will be counter-productive for him."

The two angels bickered a bit more after Dean told Castiel to go and fuck himself.

* * *

"Dean."

"Busy."

"You don't appear busy," Castiel noted without a shred of empathy.

"Just get out," Dean grumbled.

He didn't mean to sound annoyed. He actually felt bad, for himself and his pathetic situation, of course, but also for Castiel. It was nice and all that Castiel had a giving-a-shit capacity of a dirty cat and the patience of a conservative housewife; Dean had the general sense that if sweet Cas would have a sudden change of heart about him, Dean would piss his pants the very second, because Castiel had an air of something quiet, vengeful and lethal about him. And it was nice that he felt none of these things towards Dean, but tolerance was tolerance.

So it was nice and all, but really, Dean could count his blessings on one hand.

With one finger.

The middle one.

Zach and Uri had a very good point. A Winchester wasn't exactly something you could babysit without losing a few IQ points and a chunk of your sanity. Castiel would've been better off with someone easier.

"You are conflicted."

"You're on my bed."

"You are on your own bed with shoes on, Dean."

"So?"

Castiel sighed and shuffled to the very edge of the mattress, and Dean judged his personal space bubble and concluded there was enough of it for him to sit up and cross his legs. His boots stayed on like a bad fashion statement. Castiel acknowledged them with a nod.

"Don't plan on sticking around for long," Dean explained his boots, "your party sucks."

There was a nod, and Castiel chewed his lower lip for a good, long while. Well, no shit his lips would be chapped if this was a habit.

Dean didn't tell him this.

"If I were to speak to you seriously, Dean, would you entertain a brief conversation with me?"

The angel sat up straighter when Dean told him yes, but his shoulders slumped just an inch when Dean asked for the clown suit so he could 'entertain' him better.

"Alright," Castiel cut him off, and Dean didn't have the luxury of slumping. He didn't move, but every muscle in his back tensed and he would fight Cas with his fucking teeth if that new edge to his voice turned into hostility. "I will talk and you will listen. I have never been impolite to you, but I can see I can't expect the same from you. Do you understand, Dean?"

Dean clicked his tongue. "You do… realize I don't wanna be here at all, right?"

"Yes, Dean. You made this very clear," Castiel furrowed his brows, but at least his eyes were honest. "I'm sorry that I can't let you leave. This is not your only problem, however."

Dean snorted, but something in the very core of those blue irises told him he should really not follow up on that in snort with some ugly words.

"So what's my other problem, Dr. Sexy?" he said instead. Castiel leveled him with a glare.

"That is."

Dean realized there would be no clarification unless he asked when they sank into a silence for two full minutes. He rotated his wrist in mid-air and encouraged: "that is _what_?"

"That is _the problem_," Castiel clarified helpfully.

Conversing with Castiel was kind of like walking into a streetlight pole _for fun_. He streetlight was this tall, shiny and unmovable thing of brightness and enlightenment, and no matter how many times Dean would beat his head against it, he could not understand a fucking thing that went on in its head. Because it was a fucking _streetlight_ _pole_.

There was a fundamental problem of communication between the two of them.

It was frustrating.

To Castiel, Dean guessed, Dean was probably this tiny, short and dull human that would go up to him and bang his head against his tall pole-ness. Castiel couldn't understand Dean either, and Dean couldn't understand him, so if he couldn't understand, he could at least relate.

"We are _so_ on different wavelengths here," Dean grumbled and pressed his fingers against his temple, and just stared at the man-shaped being that seemed to be born in a wrinkled, cheap suit.

"Oh," Castiel finally got it, "you don't understand. Forgive me. The problem is that you like me."

After a while, he added: "why are you laughing?"

"Dr. Sexy's a TV show, you doofus," Dean managed between semi-neurotic chuckles.

"I am aware that was a pop culture reference."

"Oh, did you really?"

"Yes, you make a lot of them. At me. I am a stranger to you, a kidnapper, if you will. I sense resentment, and I have a general idea of what you generally feel towards strangers, and this is not it. You cannot stand me, you are afraid of me, you know you should feel indifference and distrust, yet you like me. You are conflicted."

"Oh, come on," Dean rolled his eyes.

"I am right," Castiel insisted, and Dean couldn't really argue against it.

"So you're saying I developed Stockholm Syndrome over five days?"

"I don't think so. You would still kill me and run if I ever gave you a chance."

"Kill you?"

Castiel gave him a look.

"No, really. How do I kill you? Please tell me more."

His best Gene Wilder from Charlie's Chocolate Factory impression went on completely ignored. "It isn't good that you are conflicted."

"'Cause your boyfriend told you, yeah?"

"You heard us," Castiel realized.

"I got ears," he shrugged. "Apparently, so does Bal… Bel… Bellazilla."

"Balthazar will not be doing that again," was Castiel's stern reply.

"'Cause you _told_ him?"

"Because I _warded_ against him. Excessively."

Dean snorted.

"Balthazar is my closest brother. I will acquaint the two of you when you decide to cease your hostility. I think you will like him."

"So you want me to share my special deep _like_ with other people?"

"I have yet to meet anyone who doesn't like Balthazar."

"I don't like him," Dean droned.

"Anyone who doesn't _learn_ to like Balthazar," Dean stared at him, and Castiel shuffled as if he had told a lie. "I admit he has his… moments."

"Oh yeah?"

"Numerous… moments."

"Buddy, sorry to break this to you, but your friend's a dickbag."

Castiel chewed his lips for a while, then finally sighed in defeat.

"I know," he told Dean.

"Yeah," Dean clicked his tongue again.

"Still. Bellazilla. I think I like that," Castiel considered aloud, and his slumped frame straightened as he relaxed. The frown lines on his face relaxed, and Dean watched him for a moment. There was a smile on his face, but his lips were a straight line and Castiel wasn't really physically smiling. But it felt like he was. It were the eyes, Dean decided. Castiel was smiling with his eyes.

"You gonna call him Bellazilla?" Dean's own voice sounded cold to his ears.

"Oh, no," Castiel assured him. "I'll tell someone else, and they will do it for me."

There was nothing left to be said after that, and Castiel lifted himself off Dean's bed and left only a warm imprint in the mattress.

"Balthazar is still in the living room, on the couch," he told Dean as he left. "He will leave once he wakes up. I don't think he should be returning to Heaven until he sobers up. Last time he flew like that he crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Japan experienced a tsunami. He was not sorry, and I have a suspicion he never learned his lesson."

* * *

Castiel had a point.

Dean was more okay with him than should be normal in his circumstances.

And Dean had a solution.

He should get the fuck out.

That would obviously solve everything.

He phased his room, ever so trapped in it and ever so annoyed with his predicament, annoyed, more than anything, at the brother thing being rammed down this throat. It reminded he had a little bitch of a brother of his own, one he needed to save, like, a month ago, and annoyed that Castiel was perfectly fine parading his family and ignoring the livelihood of Dean's.

Dean generally wasn't a hateful person.

There were times that he wished hell on whatever evil, wicked thing was killing the good people of the US of A, or, worse yet, messing with Sam, but he never explicitly wanted to do anything particularly terrible and over the line of necessity to anything what went bump in the night.

But it was all sort of technical. You couldn't put hatred in Castiel's tomato soup and measure it with a spoon.

He couldn't measure _like_, either. It was a tolerable kind of _like_, a familiar kind of _like_, a _like_ that was intimate and old, so familiar to him that it was like he watched Castiel's entire life, knew it, sensed it, felt it like Castiel's essence sparked somewhere inside Dean's soul.

And he hated that, because it was some stupid angelic bullshit magic, because he didn't know shit about Castiel, because never met him before except once at a bar-

The night before-

The-

The…

Well, fuck.

That little son of a bitch stalker.

It was stupid to assume Castiel made the hell-brand Trinity appear on his wrist, no, that was Dean's own doing. But the fact that Castiel "didn't" seek him out and "randomly" took him in was suddenly looking as clear as bullshit.

There was a knock on his door.

A fucking knock.

Dean would very much like to knock, too, knock some teeth, out, and ask the bastard questions about what the fuck kind of stalkery was really going on.

Dean's first clue should've been that the knock on his door had a tune to it.

But he was Winchester. Dean Winchester. When his mind was on the right track, thoughts of bars derailed it, and when he was throwing a fit, he opened doors and thought about what would greet him on the other end only when it was too late.

And, sure enough, a smug face of Ken with the beginnings of a goatee greeted him with that sort of predatory leer from back in the kitchen.

The gentle slam of the door. The trench coat missing from its shelf. Fuck. Dean realized in a bone-chilling dismay that he and the gay angel asshole were _alone_.

Nothing for nothing, but Castiel probably couldn't spot a snake in the garden even if it was talking to him. Balthazar may have been a cool dude in the angelic circles, but Dean had no illusions about chargeless and orderless angels wondering the Earth aimlessly.

Dean was stupid, but he wasn't stupid when it came to basic life skills. As soon as he realized Castiel wouldn't notice anyway, he hoarded kitchen knives, totally conspicuously and giving zero shits about random knife handles sticking out of bad hiding spots.

There was one just in his reach.

He backed to it, watching Balthazar lean into his doorframe.

"Cassie said I could chill with you a bit. Though s'not much of a party here, innit?"

"Nope," said Dean evenly, sending off straight-and-not-into-this-shit-man vibe and get-the-fuck-away-from-me-pretty-boy vibe.

Balthazar stood there for a few minutes, staring at Dean and expecting to be serviced or something.

"Well," he concluded, "you're boring."

"Yeah, well, sorry 'bout that."

Balthazar couldn't take a hint. Just like Castiel couldn't take a hint, actually, Dean realized, though it kind of made him sick to draw a comparison between them because Castiel was a semi-permanent thing and Balthazar was just a passing trucker thing in the back of a pit stop.

So they stared at each other some more. Dean kept his face carefully neutral while Balthazar beamed rainbows and smiles at him.

"Want a beer or something?"

"There's no beer here."

"Takes like a second to get beer. There's a liquor store downstairs. Well, what I left of it, so..."

"No thanks."

"No?"

"No," Dean hissed.

"What's your problem?"

And that's when Dean had an idea.

It wasn't his brightest idea because he wasn't exactly the sharpest crayon in the box or the brightest tool in the shed, but it was a hell of a lot more than he had before it, because all he had before was a rigid, limp dick of an angel, and now he had one that was clearly interested. Alone. With a bed behind them. It wasn't that hard to get from A to B. It wasn't like he didn't have experience.

It took some effort to let the knife be. He let his fingers gingerly slide down its shaft. He lingered at the tip and considered his predicament, then, just like that, Dean let go and let it all happen.

"You're bored?" he tried.

"Yeah?"

"Wanna have some fun?" Dean nearly gagged around his tongue.

It showed.

"You make fun sound bloody awful."

Dean opened his mouth to elaborate, but Balthazar interrupted him, and he was glad for it.

"I know 'xcatly what you mean. An' I'm not touching my brother's stuff," he said in thick British and then flinched, "an' don't tell him I called you his stuff stuff. An' turn 'round."

Dean kept his mind blank.

"Up to 'fun' after all?"

"Cassie said you were Zachie's before he got you. 'S that true?"

Blank.

"Up to another kind of fun, then?"

"No, an' I asked you if Zach made friends with you."

"Yes," Dean hissed. "Want a peak?"

"Gross. Not really," he raised his hand and opened his palm, "right hand to God, not gonna hurt you. Hand, back, two seconds, an' I get out of your space, yeah?"

"Why?"

"Because," Balthazar sang his vowels and swirled his finger for Dean to turn around. Reluctantly, so very reluctantly, Dean turned sideways without turning his back on him or letting him out of his sight. "Oi, suspicious, ain't we. Fine," Dean watched a hand hover over the back of his shirt and out of his line of sight. His muscles tensed once the fabric was pressed into them. "Because Zach was lookin' for something."

Dean snorted.

"Digging into me looking for gold?"

Balthazar leaned back into the wall. "Dunno. An' he was diggin' into your soul, dumbass. He digs into the soul of every charge he gets. It's kidna creepy and kinky in bad way. "

"Well," Dean came up short of anything clever to say, "what's he looking for?"

"Nobody upstairs knows. Didn't even know if Zach was actually doing it, T'was a rumor 'till now._ Con-fir-med_. Bavariel from accounting owes me a hundred quid now. Thanks."

"Um," Dean shifted in his spot. "You're welcome?"

Balthazar gave him thumbs up, was about to leave, and Dean was just beginning to learn how to breathe again when he changed his fucking mind half-way through the door.

"An' by the way, what you were offerin'. Not cool."

Dean snorted.

"You aren't the one looked up."

Balthazar gave him the stink eye.

"Mate, if they order me to stay in a cardboard box for a thousand years, I would. Everything's relative. On the other hand, I'm not the one with a soul. An' yours is kinda dirty, but I can see from here it's got a couple marbles missing."

Dean tried to stop him, but it was like he was vomiting words.

"I've seen this monkey at the zoo once. It was in a cage, all locked up, all lonely, kinda like a giant ship in the middle of the ocean. I'm not really sure, but I think it was trying to talk to me in monkey language. But I don't know monkey language, mate."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. And it was a monkey, so it was sort of senile, but it was going even more crazy in there, locked up and all. Like Rose and her love thing with that idiot guy in that awful movie with Celine Dion. Anyway, I think you're the monkey. This can't be good for you, Cassie's not here, an' so I'll leave the door open for you, yeah?"

And just like that, Balthazar poofed out of existence, and Dean ran the fuck away.

* * *

**Season gr8 will finish with Destiel becoming cannon. I have money riding on dis. Totally gonna happen. I'm a part of the tumblr army, wat. **

**Pls early bird reviews before shit starts going down and I start crossposing this with chapter arts.**

Thank you shoutout to **lljn105 **for reviewing last chapter.

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V


	5. Filthy Things

_A/N: My name is King, I would have nine cats by now if I wasn't allergic, and I don't own Supernatural._

* * *

**MUCH TOO SOON**

**Ch5: Filthy Things**

Bobby wasn't answering any of his damn phones.

Six messages he'd left cost him six quarters he'd stolen from a blind homeless man, and if that alone didn't buy Dean a private jet on the Ninth Circle Airlines, he might as well call it a day and do some blow off dead hookers.

_'Bobby, it's Dean. I'm alright, long story, forget about me, is Sammy alright? I don't have a phone, I'll call you back in an hour. Pick up.'_

Six quarters, six hours, six messages, and it was too bad Dean was too short on change to buy himself some tinfoil for a tinfoil hat and maybe even a sandwich board.

Castiel couldn't have picked an emptier, sleepier corner of a major city even if he tried really hard.

Dean could have been six hours out at this point, somewhere North, or South, or any direction, really, and he even stole some car keys and held onto them for a whole of two seconds before the little Toyota logo branded itself into his hand. The keys fell out of his hand, the dude noticed something fishy, and Dean politely told him he dropped his keys. The dude picked them up like they weren't made of hot coals, and that was that.

Dean couldn't leave.

So he wasted time and tested the boundaries of his own personal devil's trap; even the thought of driving burned his wrist where the Trinity winked at him like a bad rash.

Six hours, and his whole arm was an angry raw color, and Dean knew he couldn't get too far, so he camped a payphone, called Bobby every hour, and pondered the meaning of life.

He wondered if there was a point where his arm would fall off.

Maybe Balthazar had let him out to show him there would be no way out.

Maybe he was supposed to go back on his own.

Maybe that was the _point_.

Maybe the scent of the flesh in his arm roasting from the inside was supposed to force him back to where he was supposed to _be_, back to the ninth floor, to Castiel's apartment, and six hours of testing the boundaries had proven that the closer Dean was to the building, the less his flesh had burned.

_Maybe not,_ he thought stubbornly. He would suffer it.

He needed to know what happened to his brother.

Illinois grew dark fast, and there was another hour to kill.

Dean decided to rest on a red wooden park bench and get in touch with his inner homelessness.

He could, in theory, defraud a lovely pair of elderly people out of their grand-children's college trust fund (or whatever else got him so deep in Hell that Asstiel would just give up on him and leave him the fuck alone) and shack up in a motel, but he wasn't a complete idiot.

If Dean lost something dirty, mouthy and not really worth anything save his car and his tape collection - if Dean was an angel in this scenario - he'd fly around every dirty motel in town looking for himself.

He never got to make his seventh call.

"Don't run, Dean. Please, don't."

_Fuck_. He pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned into his knees. "Fuck."

There was a parking lot behind them, and a solicitor and the customer began making loud noises of a transaction against a dumpster.

It was a ridiculous soundtrack to fear, Dean thought. Two people banging.

But Castiel didn't seem to mind. He just stood over Dean and radiated calmness, even as Dean tried to shrink out of existence.

"What're you gonna do to me," Dean didn't ask because he didn't want to know.

Castiel's voice was quieter than the fait rustle of trees shaking off their old leaves. It was soft, pitying even, but at the same time not pitying, but remorseful. Dean dared to peek. His eyelashes brushed against his palm, and he saw a silhouette towering over him. His breath froze, in fascination, really, because the thing that would usually force him to shield his eyes was always a thing that was going to kill him.

This was power, then. Knowing that whatever Castiel chose to do to him, it would be so absolute and devastating that Dean would sit through it and wait for it to be over and pray.

And it was an exercise of power that Castiel did nothing to him. That in itself made Dean's blood freeze.

"Nothing," said Castiel, and his voice was like water. "Give me your arm."

"I like having an arm," Dean started, but Castiel had no patience for his pettiness. There were strong fingers on his wrist, and Dean didn't have time to feel their texture or flinch at something picking his poling skin because there was pain one moment, and then there wasn't, and the absence of pain made him think he lost his arm.

He didn't. His own fingers curled in panic, and they curled around something warm and welcoming.

They curled into Castiel's palm.

Dean dropped his hand before they both broke into song.

"If you could just do that to my back-" he immediately overreached without a shred of gratitude.

"Homing pain is not a physical wound," Castiel said, still standing over Dean and pitying him. "You should have just come back. I'm sure you realized how redemption brands work."

It was then that Dean saw a shadow. He still had half his face in his palm and was set on staring at the tips of Castiel's dirty trench coat, but he saw a shadow of a hand reaching for his head. It was Castiel's hand, it had to be, and he felt the quiet disturbance in air it made near the top of his head. It lingered there for a moment, and Dean wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it dropped to the side of the dirty coat and stayed there.

It was like Castiel had things he didn't dare do; just like Dean didn't dare to get too mouthy or ask any real questions, Castiel didn't dare to reach for Dean's head and either rip it off or comfort him.

"You are, if nothing else, determined and stubborn," Castiel told him.

"And nothing else," Dean confirmed.

"You are so much more than that."

Castiel stood there for a moment longer, then the hooker and a stoned guy banging in the garbage alley shrieked and moaned like cows sharing a really delicious strand of grass.

There was a faint rustle of the coat, and Dean was sort of hoping for a backhand or a punch in the ribs, because he could deal with violence. He could handle violence, it was what he knew how to handle, and he was practically asking for it, but Castiel only sat next to him, and kindness was something Dean couldn't handle.

The dirty trench coat was all wrinkled now.

"Dean."

Dean snapped and glared at him. It was dark and yellow under the flickering park light, and Dean wasn't sure what he was expecting, maybe for Castiel's impossibly blue eyes to glow in the dark, but they didn't. They were almost gray, and Castiel looked as rigid as the morning he messed up his coffee and salted it or the time he declared he had to open the cut skin on his back to reposition it so it would heal properly.

"What."

Castiel had chapped lips. They were chapped because the angel had a habit of folding them in and licking them inside his mouth when he couldn't quite figure out how to say something in the simpleton human language.

It was often the case that Castiel would give up and say nothing at all.

He was really trying this time, and Dean gave him credit.

"Look up," he finally said.

Dean had his reservations about baring his throat to something so sweetly vicious.

Castiel had no such concerns and tilted his head to the sky. And Dean's breath kind of hitched, because in profile, with lamplight kissing the outline of his nose and lips and chin and a rather well-pronounced Adam's apple, Castiel was every bit the pretty angel with a silver harp and a toga.

He looked serene.

When it finally occurred to Dean he was staring and Castiel probably knew Dean was staring, and it was too awkward to deal with that can of worms, he tore his eyes away and looked at something else. He found the two of them looking at the same stars, throat exposed and all, and yes, Cas would probably not stab him in the jugular with a holy tax accounting pencil, and yes, the clear sky was beautiful.

The stars were never the same. That was the thing Dean loved about them, and the night skies were the reason Dean had never even once allowed himself to think stars revolved around him, not even when he was little. These stars he couldn't recognize now looked so within his reach if he could just climb the plastic playground his Dad had built for him, so out of his reach when Dad had told him to take care of Sammy, and so different from the hood of the impala on summer days and winter days and spring days and fall days, in Idaho sky and Kentucky sky and Pennsylvania sky. New York was too light-polluted and he could never see the stars there, but Dean could imagine them in the sort of pathetic way he once made an art project on black paper and dotted it with yellow marker and never quite figured out why the yellow wasn't showing up.

But then again, it wasn't that hard to imagine the world through a bottle of whiskey.

Illinois stars were nice, he decided.

"Do you like the stars, Dean?"

Dean wished he took Balthazar up on that beer.

"Sure."

"I like the stars, too. They are my first memory."

Dean allowed this to settle like gunk on the bottom of his stomach before he blinked and cleared his throat.

This was getting all shades of awkward fifty miles too fast.

Dean suppressed a stupid 'um' and shuffled away, God forbid they bump elbows.

"When we are… born, Dean, we are born knowing that Our Father's creation is beautiful. I was born knowing humans were God's most beautiful creation. I thought stars were human souls. I was wrong, of course. Human souls are much more beautiful," Castiel turned and stared right into the core of Dean's nugget, "_all_ of them, without a single exception." he finished forcefully.

A string around Dean's heart snapped.

"Your soul looks like that star," Castiel nodded at something in the sky only he could see, some star near some constellation Dean couldn't identify, one star of a billion stars a billion miles away, and Dean's soul knew that if Castiel were to look up at the sky at any night, he could pick the very same star all over again.

It was a warm feeling.

"Come," Cas got to his feet, "I think the pair procreating against the dumpster has finished. We will not be disturbing their love if we leave now."

* * *

That was when it clicked for Dean. In the SmartCar on their way back. His plan.

Because he realized what Castiel was and what Castiel wasn't. Castiel wasn't a Guardian Angel. He said as much himself, and that left the truth to be something terrifying. Castiel was a soldier. That was all he ever knew; it was why he was awkward with his voicing thoughts and why he was awkward with his using body.

Castiel never had the occasion to learn.

Another terrifying truth settled in the back of Dean's mind and left him numb for hours. It wasn't indifference or kindness standing between Dean and penance. It was silly patriotism. Castiel was taught about souls, and that was all he knew, and he wasn't in the mood to kill Dean because he didn't really know Dean at all, and if Dean was stupid enough to show-and-tell Cas what that filthy and unredeemable soul of his actually looked like, Castiel just might just smite him and call it a day.

It was also an opening Dean was reluctant to take, but he wasn't asking to die.

He was asking for a way out, and if this wasn't it, the 666 of the call/quarter/hour ratio can go and fuck itself with its stupid omen bullshit.

Because this, _this_ Dean could handle.

Castiel, God bless him, was a lot like that sleazy lawyer in Montana with a wife, three kids, and a kink for boys.

Castiel didn't seem to want anything, but that was only because he didn't know _how_ to want.

So. Well. Dean was Dean.

And Castiel wasn't ugly.

He wasn't fat or sleazy, and he probably didn't have any really unpleasant power play fantasies.

Actually, to give due credit to the guy, he was the sort to model underwear on the covers of not-porn next do Dean's real porn.

Dean even bet his dick didn't smell too bad.

He could work with this.

So, Dean being Dean and not dwelling on whatever sacrifice he'd have to make this time, said, "I like what you said about stars. It was pretty cool."

_Wow, Dean. Smooth. _

Except just like that, Castiel went for it. Nothing in corners of his mouth tugged or anything, but it were his eyes that were really smiling. Dean suppressed some sort of feeling.

Dean didn't really get that far, he noticed. Cas drove him through that street that didn't have a single payphone, through the alleys where Dean stole change from the homeless guy, through streets littered with boarded up food stores, through a pothole and right over the curb - Castiel wasn't the greatest driver in the world - through some more places, and into the underground parking.

Dean didn't even remember parking underground last time.

"The dinner will be late," Castiel declared when they entered the apartment. The kitchen clock read 2:04AM.

Late.

Yeah.

"Are you even hungry?" Dean tried gingerly.

Cas still wasn't visibly furious with him, so maybe he wasn't even mad at all.

"No."

"…okay. Um. You getting' up early for work or something?"

"No."

Maybe a little mad.

"Then go do your thing. I'll make you food."

Castiel blinked at him like it never occurred to him that Dean actually could.

"What. I'm just condemned to hell, not handicapped."

* * *

And so Dean started flirting. Shamelessly.

He bent low and blinked slowly, tried hard for random white sauce to get caught on his lips, made sure Castiel caught him shirtless at least four times that day, and made a point to say things that'd make the Satan blush. With embarrassment that one day his house of Hell would have to play host to Dean's lameness. It had to be at the very least _cute_. There was no way in hell Castiel would understand complex innuendoes, so Dean tried for the really obvious, and it was textbook bad, but at least Dean was sure there was a chance he was understood.

And so, there were only so many excuses Dean could make for taking his shirt off in the middle of dinner.

"I think you have an obsession with dinner," Dean said rhetorically.

"And your sense of temperature has been very off recently. Do you have a fever?"

"No, it's just really hot in here. I think it's you."

He had a lurking suspicion Castiel didn't understand him anyway.

The lurking suspicion became a fact when Dean had asked Castiel if it hurt when he fell from Heaven, and Castiel had said, "_yes_."

Well.

What do you know.

But Castiel proved himself to be as oblivious as he was rigid. The span of his of emotions seemed to be limited to only indifference and confusion, and Dean was at the end of his rope by the end of the next day.

So maybe he wasn't trying all that hard. Thing was, midtown bars had many girls. If one of them had a stick up her ass, he could just move on to her friend. But alas, there was only one Castiel.

Dean wondered if he'd have had better luck with Zachariah, or even a less hung-over Balthezar.

So after Castiel gave him a look that made Dean shrink in his seat because he was stupid enough to ask Castiel the Angel of the Lord if his dad was a baker 'cause Cas had a nice set of buns.

"My father is God, Dean," Castiel furrowed his brow, offended, and Dean didn't move for a full minute because he was expecting his guts to start boiling.

"Just trying to make conversation, jeez," he muttered when he felt safer.

There was another thing to try, then. Dean's plan, still mostly in the planning stages, was going nowhere, and very slowly.

Castiel didn't really seem to know anything about anything, and maybe, just maybe, Dean could get out of the whole thing relatively scar-free. His captor wasn't really all that cruel, probably not even in bed. Actually, he wasn't really all that anything.

"So, what do you do when you're not here?"

"Work, Dean."

"Work? Like, in accounting or something?"

"No."

"Like Heaven?"

"Heaven business, yes."

"Oh, so I'm dead then, 'cause this much be heav—"

"Dean," Castiel sat down his cutlery, and Dean's eyes lingered on the fork he had put down and the knife that he didn't. "Enough. What are you doing?"

Dean swallowed hard and tried not to gag.

"I'm hitting on you."

"Yes, I can tell."

Woah.

Wait.

Back the fuck up that ramp.

"You _know_ I'm hitting on you?"

"You are not exactly being subtle, Dean."

Dean blinked, then blinked again, then swallowed a knot in his throat. Underestimating the intelligence of the thing you were hunting was what got many good men gutted. It was one of the first things Dad had taught him, and it was something that never worried him when it came to Sam because Sam wasn't an idiot like Dean. Dean, unfortunately, was every bit the idiot.

"Um," he said dully and stared at the cupboard behind Castiel. The cupboard was open just a crack, but Dean knew it was because it was off its hinges and too busted to close properly. It needed fixing, and Castie's food sucked, and there were holes in Dean's socks, and Dean wasn't prepared for his Thing to escalate this quickly. He wasn't. But then again, there was his chance, right there, sitting across from him and looking frustrated. "Well, then. You want a written invitation or somethin'?" He placed his own cutlery over his plate.

"And invitation to what, Dean?"

Dean took a deep breath.

It trembled on its way to his lungs, but he kept it down.

"Fuck me."

The words left his lips like he was asking Castiel to pass him the potatoes. They left a salty aftertaste, but even then, Dean had to breathe softly and resist a shudder that bolted down his spine.

His words were cold.

The whole world was cold.

Castiel didn't move, didn't say anything at all, just stared at him with those cold and dispassionate blue eyes, like Dean offered him the potatoes, and he was considering if he wanted them or not, which was insulting in itself. And it hurt. It hurt Dean's lungs and eyes and hands because fuck, he was scared.

But this was all he could do in this vacuum of a prison where Castiel sucked out all his power and all his will and left him to rage and shiver in frustration and fear that all of Castiel's not-kindness would come to an end.

And it wouldn't be a one-time thing, oh no, if Castiel were to accept, because for whatever sick reason he waited for Dean to offer instead of just bending him over his damn breakfast counter and enjoying the perks of humanity, and Dean was just so, so fucking afraid that Castiel would accept that he could barely sit still.

The thoughts pressed Dean into a corner of his mind, and he didn't realize that he shrank back into his seat.

But it got worse.

Castiel didn't say anything, he just stared at Dean. Stared, probably like he sat and stared into nothingness and waited for Dean to crawl back to him from his little single-man eloping to the park party. A wave of something stone-cold washed over Dean when he realized the fucking _thing _wanted him to come to _it_.

That's what the 'you like me' thing was about.

It had to be.

It had to be it, then. Castiel didn't do anything to Dean because he was waiting for Dean to realize he had to do it to himself.

It was _penance_.

Dean's knees shuddered in protest, but he worked them and got to his feet and walked the agonizing three feet to where the angel sat, stoic and mighty and so out of Dean's reach. How was he supposed to get that thing to turn its back on him? Oh, but the impossibility of Dean's plan dawned on him. It drowned him in another icy tide, and fuck, it was too late, because he was there, and he _offered_.

_Man up,_ he told himself.

There was really nothing to warrant his fear. Get on your knees. Suck is cock. Let him tug your hair and call you a filthy slut – and he'll be right– and try to spit gracefully.

But there was something about Castiel, about his whole terrifying presence that made Dean scared. Just scared, and numb, and something about Castiel screamed at him that _no, you are safe,_ but it was the damn angelic aura, not Castiel's actual demeanor. Castiel's demeanor was the furthest thing from making Dean feel in any way safe.

Fuck, there went that tremble.

"Well," Dean whispered and leaned into Castiel's ear, because he couldn't trust himself to use volume in his voice, "look how horny I am. Wanted you to fuck me this whole time."

Castiel didn't move, not even when Dean let his fingers trail down the buttons of the unpressed shirt, trail over the belt buckle, down the zipper of the wrinkled pants and pull it down, but there was nothing was warm and yarning for him.

He'll have to earn his keep.

He pressed his nose to Castiel's nose and licked his lips.

The move didn't go unnoticed, and damn, there it was. A cold hand on his thigh, fingers curling into the rough fabric of his jeans.

_How do you want it, Dean, you little slut?_

There were dishes on the counter, and the marble would press into his cock if Castiel were to bend him over it, so he'd have to improvise with the positioning if he somehow got hard from this. It would be difficult to breathe, too, but if he'd just…

It was that kind of train of thought that distracted Dean from realizing Castiel wasn't pulling him to his lap or throwing him down on the floor, but carefully, ever so carefully like he was handling something scared and fragile, pushing him away.

Dean was already an arm's length away when he realized Castiel didn't want his mouth on his dick, and it served him right because hell only knew where Dean's mouth had been.

Fuck.

"What? I'm not good enough or somethin'?"

Castiel bit his lip and tried finding his words, but he wasn't quick enough. Dean was about to straddle him in his fucking seat, because fuck, rejection wasn't something he actually considered.

"Or do you wanna get to know me first?"

Castiel blinked and Dean snorted.

"Fine. I'm an Aquarius. I like world peace, sunsets, long walks on the beach, and your cock."

Suddenly, Castiel had a very comprehensive vocabulary.

"Dean. Why?"

"'Cause I'm here, so you might as well."

"Why?"

"Oh, come on, dude. I've been locked here for days, and I'm available. I'm bored, you're frustrated with your job or whatever. Bend me over and put it in my mouth, my hole, whatever, it's not like I'm gonna tell anyone."

If Dean didn't know any better, he would've thought the angel looked slightly shell-shocked.

"Dean, I need you to give me your mind so I can heal it. I don't need you to give me your body."

"Why the fuck not?"

"You are only here because you are condemned to hell. Balthazar told me what he did, and he told me why. I know what you are doing, and I won't use your body. I refuse to touch you."

"So what?" but blue eyes trailed down his bare arm and to the wrist where the swirl of destiny was attached to Dean's wrist like a leach. "Oh. This. Fuck this, you and I both know you're not even trying."

Castiel watched him passively.

"Look. If you don't wanna look at the mess on my back, we can do vanilla. Just do _something. _I've seen the way you look at me, I don't know if you know, but I know what people look like when they like what they see. You can try whatever you want, for fuck's sake, it's not like I can stop you, and I'd stop freaking out 'cause I'd know you're doing _something_. I won't stare lovingly into your eyes or anything, scouts honor. Or, you can just fuck my mouth. Just- _something_. It's _fine_."

The thought of Castiel fucking his throat raw felt like a better idea than taking it up the dumper.

"Dean, I'm not interested in having sex with you."

"Why the fuck not?"

"Because I don't want to."

Dean actually rolled his eyes, despite the tremors still trying to make his knees buck and cold fear in his fingertips. It was the adrenaline, maybe it was fear or desperation, but it was no excuse. He pushed Castiel, pushed him harder than he intended, and Castiel was really not expecting Dean to be dumb enough to physically attack an Angel of the Lord, so he ended up against the wall with Dean pressing his body snug against him and breathing into his face.

He could just _show_ him.

Dean dropped to his knees.

The fly of the crumpled dress pants was undone thanks to Dean, and white briefs were peaking through the slit.

It still didn't register with either of them what exactly was about to happen, and Dean slipped his fingers through the zipper and pressed his face so close to Castiel's clothed cock that he could feel the heat of his own breath bouncing back at him.

And then he froze because Castiel spoke.

It were the words that always got him more than anything physical anything with sharp teeth could do to him. The words Castiel said made Dean so sick that bile bubbled in the pit of his stomach and he sat there with his knees all bruised and his fingers wrapped firmly around the length of an angel's dick.

"I said I don't want this," was all Castiel said.

He didn't sound angry or resentful or disgusted by Dean's unwanted advances. He could just push Dean away and be done with it, and that would have made Dean's insides hurt so much less.

But that wasn't what happened.

What happened was confusion. Castiel sounded confused.

It was like he didn't fucking understand why Dean would touch him after being told to leave him alone.

And hell, did it resonate.

He stayed still on his knees on the floor because that's where belonged, until it sunk like dull fingernails into skin, and he recoiled away and slapped both hands over his mouth.

Castiel didn't move, he just stood there, frozen and confused, with his fly open and Dean's hand touching his limpness, and Dean scrambled to his feet and ran for the toilet where his vomited violently, not because he came close to sucking off an angel, but because he was tired and sick and scared and he knew what he wanted it and went for it like a complete asshole.

* * *

"Castiel," Rachel's song was concerned static to Castiel's ears. He made no effort to hear her. If she were to suspect anything, he would lie, and she would believe him. But he knew what she had done, and it made him wish he knew nothing.

"Did the calls he make help you narrow down Sam Winchester's location?" he asked her absently, busy distributing his armies along the edges of the world most vulnerable to propaganda.

"No," she at once appeared remorseful to have disturbed his work. "Dean Winchester's blasphemy, however, come to my attention."

"Have you come to tell me how I should handle it?" he said softly, but what he really wanted to do was snap.

She hesitated.

"I thought perhaps you would get Zachariah to teach him consequences of _fondling_ an Angel of the Lord."

Castiel recognized her emotion then, and it amused him.

"Are you offended for my honor, Rachel?"

Rachel's colors changed at once; her manner became dull and ashamed, and Castiel wondered how she could experience feelings with such ease. She was, of course, one of Gabriel's angels, now Castiel's inheritance, but he never learned much of what Gabriel had to teach him, and it was amazing how much Rachel had learned in his absence. She was proud, yet she questioned, and while it was her questioning that made her betray him, he still felt pride at having such a beautiful mind under his command, however temporary.

She hid her heart from him, and Castiel didn't feel up to guessing it.

She said, "when similar advances were made by humans onto Annael, you ordered to smite their whole city."

"Sodom and Gomorrah were also inhospitable," Castiel offered.

"And yet… you are not offended the Winchester has done the same onto you. I do not have the rank to ask you why, Castiel."

"Then tell me what you think," he told her, and he knew her heart was made up. She would spy on him and betray him, and he could do little except make her regret it. Castiel wondered if he would have put such effort into changing a mind that could not be changed before he had met Dean Winchester. Dean's mind changed thousands of times per day, about the most insignificant of things. It was something he could only observe, never understand, and he got used to it their short time together, so much so that he bore a hope Rachel could be a little like Dean.

But she couldn't. No angel could, of course. "I think you suffered and insult and did nothing about it because giving Dean to Zachariah could actually redeem him from hell."

In truth, Castiel suffered no offense.

He would tell Rachel that she guessed his mind, he would tell her Dean would suffer for his crime when he was sent to serve an eternity in hell, but they were lies, all of them. He didn't like Dean touching him and he didn't not like it; he felt indifferent, remorseful only to have put Dean up to such a desperate measure.

He briefly wondered the cost of allowing Dean to pursue a sexual relationship with him. He decided there was no cost, except Castiel would feel a little less righteous and Dean would feel a little more pathetic. There was a greater gain from allowing it than a gain from forbidding it.

It occurred to Castiel he refused because Dean has hated himself enough, has suffered enough, and there was no need to torture him with more emotional baggage. It occurred to Castiel he was _kind_ to refuse it, and an avoidance of such kindness was exactly the reason Castiel took Dean away from Zachariah and Uriel and real guardian angels who doubtless would redeem Dean's soul and open the gates of Heaven to him.

He was lucky, he supposed, that Rachel betrayed him only after he stole redemption from Dean Winchester, only once it was too late, only once Dean was Castiel's and nothing could be done for his soul.

"You have told him you will save him," Rachel said to Castiel.

"I lied," he said to her.

"I had doubts," she confessed, "about your resolve to send him to hell when the time comes. You love humanity so much. But I have no more doubts, not after what you've seen of him today. This wasn't even Dean Winchester at his worst, and already he is a filthy little thing. I'm glad you learned this, Castiel. I'm very glad."

He agreed with her.

And yet, in an unassuming corner of Castiel's mind, one he shut out and wrote off as guilt natural to paying for the cost of the world with two small human souls, he knew Dean was a good man, and he deserved salvation.

And slowly, ever so slowly, with the slow burn of agony that Castiel shared as he watched Dean Winchester hate his own existence, shivering and curled up under a pile of blankets, a seed of weeds so small Castiel would not notice it until it destroyed him planted itself into his consciousness, and the wall between his understanding humanity and _experiencing_ it began to crumble.

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**I'm the blind homeless man. Pls halp reimburse the quarters Dean stole.**

Thank you shoutout to **sushiroll13 and LolieJulie **for reviewing last chapter.

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	6. The Lion

_A/N: My name is King, Tamagotchi wtf, why do I even have this, and I don't own Supernatural._

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**MUCH TOO SOON**

**Ch6: The Lion**

"I complained to Zachariah. He has more experience, and I entertained his advice. I'm sure you can imagine what he said to me. He said I should punish you in a manner similar to your offence."

Dean's knuckles crunched and he realized he was balling his fists. There was a hair of distance between them. Castiel's socked toes were touching his, and Dean could smell Castiel's smooth aftershave and his own toothpaste mingle in one strange scent. He wanted to back away, he wanted to grab the angel and pull their bodies together, he needed to do something, anything, move, snare, scream—somehow, though, he didn't move because he was told to stay still.

Rough fingers brushed against a patch of skin on his neck.

Was Dean allowed to look? He wanted to ask, and had to bite the inside of his mouth to remind himself he wasn't allowed. Stupid. Don't talk. But nobody said anything about looking. He looked down just as fingers hooked into the collar of his shirt.

"I told Zachariah this punishment was inappropriate because I do not want to have sex with you. He said there were other ways to achieve sexual punishment."

Dean held his breath when Castiel abandoned his collar. Jagged fingernails raked at his belly now, under the hem of his dirty shirt. They tugged it off his body and left long lines of scraped skin up his chest as they glided. Should he help? He didn't know, so he stood still and breathed short shallow breaths. Castiel looked satisfied when the shirt caught on Dean's arms and Dean still didn't move to tug it off himself.

"Good," Castiel mouthed into his personal space. "You understand. Stay still unless I tell you to move. Nod." Dean nodded. "Arms up." Castiel dropped Dean's shirt to the floor and a shiver ran down Dean's spine.

"That is an acceptable difference between us, I suppose," Castiel mused when he allowed Dean to drop his arms to his sides. Those very same sharp fingernails tugged at the hem of Dean's jeans now, and Dean swallowed hard. "We are so accustomed to fear that we are desensitized to it. You are human. You are allowed to feel fear. Zachariah encouraged me to pry on yours. You are afraid of losing control over your own body."

The dull sound of a zipper opening snapped Dean's head, or maybe it was the poison in Castiel's voice. Time was slow, seconds dragged down his stomach like fingernails. The air was cold.

"You are afraid of it," Castiel continued, his words licking Dean's face with their sweet venom, and it was like the most disturbing lullaby Dean had anyone sing to him. "It is why you offered yourself to Balthazar, and tried to initiate intercourse with me. It was because you wanted to show us we had no need to take you by force and take away your will. You would take whatever we give you. Take off your pants, Dean. Stay in your place."

Fuck. He had to bend forward to get the rough jean fabric over his ankles. He had to bow and submit, that was the point. He shivered when his cheek brushed against the belly fabric of a dress shirt. When he steadied himself, he was left standing in only his boxers and socks.

"Zachariah suggested," Castiel breathed into his ear and sent another tremor down Dean's spine, "a whole array of items I could use on you."

Dean sucked in a breath and his eyes darted around the room.

"Eyes on me, Dean. Now."

The blue in Castiel's eyes was bright and liquid and uncomfortably close. "If I have brought them, there would be no use in seeing them with your eyes. They were not for your eyes. But they did not look like something you would invite into yourself. You couldn't possibly take them inside of you without a considerable amount of preparation. Zachariah advised me against preparation. It was punishment, he said. I owed you no kindness."

Dean's mind was numb, and when Castiel leaned in and hissed into his ear, he almost backed into a wall. "Take off your underwear, Dean."

There was scrutiny in those cruel blue eyes. The square chin was high, and Castiel was somehow looking down on Dean despite the difference in their height. His eyes though, they weren't burning scars into Dean's exposed body. They were trailing down every bump, every scar, every bruise and hair and muscle, down the fin under his belly button, along the length of his cock, down his legs, everywhere.

Dean didn't have a name for what he was feeling, but it had to do with ownership.

"You have a beautiful body, Dean," Castiel whispered into his ear again. He stepped closer. Dean felt fabric brush against his bare skin. "I told Zachariah as much. I didn't want to spoil your body or your mind. I told him if I were to punish you, there would be honor in doing it with my hands, not tools. But I didn't want to touch you. He suggested I humiliate you."

Dean needed to breathe. There was rock in his throat that he couldn't swallow, and no amount of air was enough for him. Castiel was circling him now, circling him like a shark or a snake or something nasty and dangerous and Dean chanted in his mind that this was _okay_, that he _agreed_ to it, that all he had to do was take it up his ass or something, and he would never do stupid shit in his life, that he would, that he wouldn't-

Cool hands stroked his shoulder blades from behind. Dean jumped, and fingers dug into his muscle in warning.

"He suggested I order you to obey me. He suggested I have you take off your clothes. He suggested-" the solid weight of Castiel's body pressed into his back firmly and held their bodies together. A hand held his waist and Dean prayed for a reach-around if Heaven-forbid he would get hard. Stubble scratched the side of his face with lazy friction. "He suggested I order you to get on your knees. He said if I didn't want to penetrate you, I should order you to open yourself."

Dean's knees buckled, and Castiel held him upright with the support he gave around Dean's waist, probably because he knew Dean wouldn't be able to stand straight, wouldn't be able to stand this, he knew Dean's mind would go numb, his muscles would turn into mush, and he would either fall or stumble and break the obedience. "Dean. Breathe."

It took him a full minute find support in his legs and breathe again. "Good," but the relief was only a cruel pause. "Lean against the wall. More. Spread your legs."

_Do you like what you see?_ Dean wanted to ask. He wondered if his voice would tremble if he dared to speak, wondered about the texture of angel lips on his back, about the sensation of having fingertips trace his muscles or dig into him with vice. He felt kisses against his skin, on his scars, but Castiel wasn't kissing him. He felt soft embrace of comfort, but it didn't come from Castiel. It came from inside, somewhere where something loved him and loved his body and his soul and wouldn't hurt him, and it was safe and secure it would protect him against whatever delicious poison spilled from the lips that should really be kissing him instead.

"He told me I should make you stretch yourself out for hours," Castiel wheezed into his ear and pressed his arms into his shoulders again, "until you are loose and empty and your muscles lose their grip. And I should be there, I should watch you, I should look inside you and force you to stimulate your prostate and deny you an orgasm. Would you _like_ to stretch yourself open for me, Dean?"

No.

No.

"That was a question, Dean. Answer it honestly."

"No," he hissed because he remembered he had an ability to speak.

"Then turn around."

Their breaths were one and their noses touched. Castiel backed him against the wall and kept him pinned there, not with his hands but with his words, and Dean stared into his blue eyes and felt owned and kept and safe.

"I refused," Castiel finished his story.

"Why?"

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.

"I did not free you," Castiel growled dangerously.

"You did," Dean whispered because he had no voice left in him. "With your eyes."

Castiel looked away and nodded.

"Good."

The spell shattered.

It rippled through him and ruptured like a net snapping and releasing him. It freed his numb mind, drained from his heart and uncoiled the chains in his very bones.

Dean was naked against the wall and his clothes were on the floor and Castiel was there and "_what the fucking fuck_?"

The weight of fabric and meatsuit and angel lifted itself away and said nothing, just bent low and picked up Dean's discarded clothes.

"What-" hissed Dean, hyperventilating, "I- I don't- what, how the fuck, I-"

Castiel kept his polite distance, only reached out to give Dean a stack of clothes he had fucking _folded_, and Dean pressed himself into the wall and almost screamed.

"That- what the fuck. You just… I don't-?!"

"Dean," cool hoarseness penetrated Dean's ears like pressure from diving too deep. "Dean, easy."

But Dean wasn't easy, he would never feel fucking _easy_ in his _life_, because what the flying fuck? He didn't understand what he just did. He didn't understand why or how. Castiel came into his room and told him to obey and Dean did and he was willing and he would have done whatever the fuck Castiel told him to do, and it could have been nasty and painful and he wouldn't done it on his own because he had his will, but his soul was detached, so he wasn't grounded by anything, and he had thoughts and he felt but he didn't know and now his mind was racing and he couldn't _breathe_, and there were no puppet strings around his neck, no real threat of anything, just '_do as I say, Dean_," and Dean _did_.

"How," he finally hissed after his mind stumbled over the edge of a cliff and entered the atmosphere.

Blue eyes tried soothing him.

"I had to reprimand you in some way, Dean. This is what I deemed appropriate."

"How the _fuck._"

"Would you perhaps fell more comfortable if you were dressed?"

Dean hissed again and dropped his clothes back to the ground.

He wasn't ashamed of his body.

Hell, he wasn't even scared.

He was livid.

"How. The. Fuck."

"I am a commanding officer of an army of angels, Dean. For a good reason, I'm sure you just learned."

The strain in Dean's brows made his eyes dry.

"I'm also sure you just learned that I _can_, Dean. I _can_ order you to do things you may not like, and you _will_ obey me. I don't do this. Do you understand why I don't do this?"

"Fuck you."

"…I don't know if an invitation to intercourse means 'yes' or 'no,' Dean."

"Don't 'Dean' me, you son of a bitch."

Castiel sighed. There was a frown in his thin brows, too. It was a tired frown, one veterans brought home with them. Castiel was… Dean had no idea what the fuck Castiel was, but he was fucked up.

That's what they both were.

Severely fucked in the head.

Fucked in the head, because when Castiel reached out to him and offered to take Dean's still trembling hand into his own, Dean accepted it. The calloused palm was warm and inviting and Dean took it like something in him was starving for it all this time.

"I am told I can be… intimidating, Dean. I am told this by my own family. I can't imagine what it must be like for you. I have the power to hurt you, but you don't need to create your own weapon only so that it can shoot first."

Dean was still preoccupied with staring at their linked hands.

"So I'm North Korea?"he snorted because everything in his life became ridiculous the moment he took Castiel's hand and realized the whole getting naked thing just now wasn't going to give him PTSD.

"There's an anime about the naked country thing," he grumbled.

"What is-"

"An art form. Shut up," Dean looked around, dropped the comforting hand and picked up his clothes again. "Fuck," he concluded.

"Yes, Dean?"

Dean slipped commando into his jeans and didn't feel any better or any worse.

"I'm actually okay with this shit. What the fuck."

"It's because you now know I mean you no harm," Castiel assured him.

"Right."

"Unless you attack me. Don't ever try to attack me again, Dean."

"Just punch me in the face next time."

"I went to Zachariah for punishment advice, not a revenge plot."

The ceiling was popcorn. Dean looked up and tried counting the individual kernels. "Yeah… I don't get that" he said.

"What confused you?"

"You. I don't get why you're nicer than good ol' Zach. You're the soldier of whatever. You should be the bigger dick here."

"Dean, I don't see how scaring you out of your clothes, literally, is me being nice to you."

"I pissed you off," was all Dean said. He was losing his mind.

Castiel regarded him very evenly.

"Dean, if you were to make me angry, you and I would not be having this conversation. You would be dead, and I would be picking my next ward."

"Hah," he breathed. "Annoyed you, then."

"No."

"Made you… inconvenienced."

"Made me go out of my way to speak to Zachariah."

"Wow."

"Yes."

"I'm not worth much, am I?"

"I happen to not be fond of Zachariah," Castiel explained.

Dean pulled his shirt back over his head. Castel just stood in the middle of his room and praised God like an out-of season Christmas tree. "You can leave now," Dean said pointedly, "show's over."

"I don't think so."

Castiel had a narrow paper bag in his hand. Dean didn't notice it at first because he insisted on keeping his eyes up where Castiel was and nowhere else, but the bag rustled and Dean recognized it as his best friend.

"I thought you would need this," Castiel offered, and Dean stuttered.

"You're supposed to buy a guy a drink _before_ you ask him to get naked."

Castiel rolled his lips into his mouth and licked them like he did every time he couldn't quite find his words. He didn't need words. He turned on his heel and left Dean's doorframe, and Dean knew he was invited to follow.

So he did.

The angel maneuvered through the field smashed dishes Dean left in the wake of his tantrum. He got into that cupboard that never quite closed and fished out two tea mugs.

Dean ran his hand through his hair and screwed his eyes shut. The next thing he knew was that he was next to a ridiculous paradox of an angel who took off his shoes but forgot to take off his trench coat and apparently didn't know anything about proper cups.

Dean opened the correct cupboard.

"These are the right glasses."

Castiel set the two mugs down on the counter and accepted the glasses wordlessly.

"And you shouldn't fold your coat, you hang it. And you shave in the morning, not at night."

They made their way to the elaborate structure of three living room couches Dean deemed useless because he could never sit there and drink his sorrows away.

Now, they felt just right.

Castiel minded the distance between them, and Dean appreciated the control over his personal space. The angel sat across him in the solitary armchair, leaned into his knees, and gingerly unwrapped a bottle of something gold and friendly and filled Dean's glass to the rim. God bless angels with no concept of what was appropriate to give to an alcoholic.

"Anything at all you want to talk about, Dean," Castiel encouraged after he licked at his own drink. Dean waited for a follow-up, but none came.

"Talk about what," Dean said and the whiskey burned down his throat in a pleasant, numbing wave. He missed the feeling.

"Anything.

Dean snorted.

"Aquarius. Like world peace, sunsets, long walks on the beach and—"

And _oh_. Oh fuck.

Dean's glass was draining at an unhealthy rate.

"Never mind," he muttered in shame and felt stupid for saying it. "Yeah. Never mind's all you're gonna get. I gave you a strip show. Counts for something."

"Of course it counts."

Thing was, Dean knew what Castiel wanted him to talk about. The _why_ and the _when_. But Castiel didn't know how to ask, and so they sat in a comfortable silence as the whiskey lulled Dean into a backwater sense of security.

It wasn't long before Dean worked his way through half of the bottle. Cas' drink remained mostly whole.

"Elixir from the top," Dean nodded to the full glass.

Castiel shook his head. "I don't understand."

"Oh, come on, man," he chuckled and the angel looked a bit bewildered when Dean sung and beat on his air drums "_it's whiskey galore. _No? Nothin'?"

"Nothing."

"ACDC. Come on."

"Music," Castiel realized.

"Oh, buddy. If you can't get that reference, you don't know what music _is_. I'd show you, but I don't have my tapes."

A nod.

"Are 'tapes' one of the things Zechariah took from you? Then I have them."

"Nah. Though if you wanna give me my shit back I wouldn't really mind."

"You may not have your weapons back, Dean. I will, however, return your jewelry."

The booze burned his nostrils and Dean coughed for a full minute as his nasal passages burned to hell.

"They're _wards,_ you dick. Not fucking jewelry."

"Wards?" Castiel's blue eyes watched Dean bite his lip, wishing he could take back the insult.

"Yeah. For protection."

Castiel, the creepy bastard who apparently collected trophies and kept them close to his heart, fished Dean's bracelets from the inner pocket of his suit. The fact that he kept Dean's stuff on his person gave Dean the willies, but they were dull willies because booze dulled everything.

"Creep," Dean told him in good humor.

"I see how this may be considered… peculiar," Castel agreed.

Dean snorted at him.

"Just kidding," he reached for his bracelets and Castiel let the cool metal and wire slide into his hand "Hey, no offence. Jus' don't believe everythin' random losers on their way to hell tell you. Bad for your complexion."

"I don't underst-"

"You're frowning," Dean downed the last quarter of his glass, "you're always frowning."

"It's the current state of my conscience," Castiel shrugged. "These are difficult times, especially for The Host. It also doesn't…" Castiel added, but stopped after a moment, apparently considering how to phrase his frustration, "…it doesn't help that I can't help you."

"Yeah. You're on your own there, buddy. If there was a gargoyle on your ass, I could talk you through it. Shit like this? Yeah, way out of my depth."

"Dean," Castiel eyed him easily, "what is it that you do for living, exactly?"

"I break into people's houses and lift credit cards. What. Don' look at me like that, I ain't goin' to hell for nothing."

"I didn't mean what you do to keep yourself fed and housed, Dean. What is your job?"

For a moment, Dean considered being honest, but an honest moment was a rare occurrence, and no amount of liquid happiness could ever get him to trust a stranger enough to drop his pants and sit through a prostate exam.

He wasn't telling.

But then again, he kind of wanted to tell, because maybe it would get Cas mad. Maybe, just maybe, if he could get Cas mad enough, he'd kill him.

"Tell you what. I'll tell you what I do if you win my game."

Castiel considered and actually nodded, all serious business and frowns and blue eyes.

"'Kay. Here goes. I spy with my littl—wait. Can you read minds?"

"Yes."

"Are you reading my mind?"

"I can read emotions, Dean. Not thoughts. I can see your emotions, but I don't understand most of them."

"Dude," Dean stared, "Learn. You'd know what women want."

The question in Castiel's blue eyes was really fucking obvious.

"Never mind," Dean muttered. "I spy with my little eye— do you even know how to play?"

"No."

"I say I spy something, and you guess what it is. Yeah?"

"Yeah," Castiel mimicked hoarsely.

Dean poured himself more whiskey and said really fast:

"I spy with my little eye something really fucking blue."

"Your soul," Castiel didn't miss a beat.

Dean opened his mouth, then closed it before it caught flies.

"I'm a hunter," he said dully.

There was silence in the House of Judgment, and Dean couldn't stand it. He traced Castiel with his eyes; stoic and as composed as a pretty thing with a constipated frown and permanent sex hair could be, the angel sat too small in his coat and radiated something dangerous and lethal from his unassuming looks. Dean had seen Castiels like this one; they were sweet children possessed by vicious demons or miracle workers with hex bags and really nasty spells. They were always unassuming and kind, and they were flytraps for stupid flies that fell for their false kindness and sweetness.

And Dean was such an idiot because the line between seeing kindness and seeing Castiel for what he really was got blurred somewhere around his fifth drink.

Dean stood up and made his way across the rift between them, waddled across it, really. And Castiel stood, too, and he knew what was coming because he put his almost-full drink on the far corner of the magazine table where Dean wouldn't kick it over.

Dean stopped inches away from him and breathed ethanol into the stubble.

It wasn't hard anymore.

He could look at Castiel and imagine that sweet thing he said about his soul, and it wasn't repulsive to touch him anymore, just a bit scary, but then again, not really, not when he was putting his filthy hands on an angel that could order him to do anything and chose to keep his hands to himself..

"Dean."

Dean's fingers ghosted over the collar of the coat.

"Am I attacking you," Dean whispered and slipped his thumbs into the folds of the coat until gravity shrugged the heavy cotton over Castiel's strong shoulders.

"No," Castiel told him. "You are seducing me."

Dean's fingers ghosted over the lean shoulders, tracing faint outlines of muscle and bone under the shirt. He counted vertebra with his nails, raking them up and into the hairline and making sure Castiel felt it, all of it.

"Is it working?"

"No."

Hair that grew in all directions, stubble, and the skin and the muscle and the hair, it was all Castiel.

And Castiel said nothing, not yet, and this was okay, Dean knew. Backing an Angel of the Lord against a wall and ravishing his body was not okay. This, whatever this was, it was okay. He saw it in blue angel eyes. It was okay. Dean was okay, as long as he could reach Castiel, reach him with his hands or his lips or his mind. Everything would somehow be okay if only Castiel understood him.

But the angel was frozen, unmoving, somehow as unreachable as ever, even with Dean's dry hands under his shirt and over his warm waist.

_Fuck you_, Dean thought. Everything was reachable.

He pressed his fingernails into the spine and left a long red mark, slipped into the hairdresser's nightmare, fisted the hair and tugged.

Nothing.

They were close, so close.

Dean's chest was just inches away from Castiel's. He could feel the heat of it; it lingered on Castiel's skin and was beginning to cling to Dean's own.

More than anything, Dean wanted to close that distance. It would've been so easy. He could slide his arm smoothly around the smaller waist and pull it in – pull Castiel in, press their bodies together, enjoy the feel of soft belly skin under his open palm…

But he couldn't. Of course, he couldn't.

Castiel would kill him if Dean were to try and grab him again. But he wanted to try, and the temptation was pressing his hands lower than they should, but oh, Castiel's body was smaller than his, it would be easy, so easy.

"Dean," he heard right by his ear, but his hands didn't fall off and his mouth didn't burn, so he kissed a shoulder again. Then again, and again. Small pecks, short, sweet, shoulders, back, neck.

Castiel didn't tilt his head, but Dean fisted some hair and there was no resistance when he gently tugged until there was more neck for him to kiss. Pecks still, and then longer kisses. Lingering on the jugular, the light stubble, the corner of the ear.

He took the soft body by the shoulders and carefully pushed him until they were facing a panorama window. It was night, the world was black, and the window became their mirror.

There, Castiel stood still in Dean's arms, neither leaning into him or leaning away. His face was as rigid and punishing as ever, his lips were relaxed and his outlines were soft. Behind him was Dean, with his lips red and dry from kissing and drinking. His fingers cupped Castiel's unshaved cheek and his eyes were staring into the eyes of Castiel's reflection.

They looked good, he had to admit. Together.

If the circumstances were different, hell, if Dean's whole life had turned out just a lint different, if they met in a diner and ordered the same thing and Cas had the patience to entertain Dean's blabber about how Sam wouldn't eat manly food, if, just if, than this could have been different.

But Sam lingered in Dean's mind, somewhere alone and helpless, without Dean there for him. Dean felt he was betraying his brother when he forced his image out of his mind. Brothers killed erections.

And Dean had the beginnings of one.

Castiel stooped to no such humanly urges.

Dean tried to massage the knots out of his back. He pressed his fingers into the dimples of the shoulders that carried the world and squeezed the muscles of the arms that could crush his skull on a whim.

He kissed Castiel's exposed neck with open-mouthed kisses. He used teeth and tongue and every trick in the book. He looked up occasionally, making sure Castiel's eyes were still on him, watching him, taking him in, understanding that Dean liked him _like that._

Finally. There was a furrow of the light brows.

Dean spun them to face each other, and it was okay now to press their bodies together. Their chests were flush and Castiel's breath was hot.

Dean kissed this forehead.

Then, his furrowed brow.

His nose, his cheeks, the corners of his mouth.

He leaned down and braved the dress shirt open, button by button, and just as his fingertips followed a path of a stray droplet of sweat and coaxed a nipple into hardness, he kissed Castiel on the lips.

Chapped lips didn't open for him, but this was alright, nobody had his face smashed in yet.

He ran the pad of his thumb over the nipple and allowed his fingernail to trail over it.

"Dean."

He had to stop.

He should.

He should call it a day and try again later.

But Castiel was so—

He kissed the stubble on his cheek.

"Why?"

"This is inappropriate."

"If it was so inappropriate, why did you even let me get this far, hmm?" Dean purred against his neck.

The rumble didn't go unnoticed, and Castiel was about to answer him with something stupidly simple, but Dean leaned in and kissed him as his mouth was opening.

Angels tasted like toothpaste.

"No. Listen," Dean whispered into his mouth, and Castiel actually listened. "Look at me. Look."

Castiel did. His blue eyes stared into Dean's for long seconds, and Dean felt like the angel wasn't staring at him but at _him_, inside of him, not on the surface or through it, but right at the very instance in reality where Dean was Dean.

This wasn't productive.

If Castiel was looking at his eyes, he could work with that.

He looked down and his own chest, and peaked only to see that Castiel's gaze followed.

Down his chest, down the print on his shirt, down the stripe of exposed skin where his shirt ended and his pants began, and into the dip just above his belt. And then at his crotch. Castiel was staring at his crotch with the same intensity of a thousand suns he used when he stared at everything.

And even though Dean had his clothes on for once, he knew Castiel knew exactly what was under the layers, and that he liked it.

Dean continued his dance.

He tipped Castiel's chin back to his eye-level.

"Hey," he said and smiled.

Castiel blinked.

"Hello, Dean."

"Anything you want, yeah?" Dean offered, and realized he wasn't honest with himself if he thought he was offering _only_ because he wanted to get the fuck out, no, he was offering because he expected nasty things, and Castiel was kind, and gentle, and, despite his lack of understanding or being productive, Castiel was trying to help him get out of hell.

As soon as Dean thought this, Castiel wouldn't look into his eyes.

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**Pls. I would love you.**

Thank you shoutout to **Guest **for reviewing last chapter.

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